Quick Reads: “Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread From the Data” By Charles Wheelan

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Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread From the Data

By Charles Wheelan

W.W. NORTON & COMPANY

A couple of years ago, Google’s chief economist predicted, “The sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians.” (Hello, Nate Silver!) If you aren’t quite ready to spend your life running regressions, Naked Statistics provides a taste of the hot data action. With a dollop of corny jokes and just a dash of math, Charles Wheelan (a Dartmouth prof) offers a conversational introduction to the concepts you need to understand everything from why “rich nerds” should have seen the 2008 Wall Street collapse coming to the best strategy for winning a car on Let’s Make a Deal. If your interest in statistics is above average, this book is worth sampling.

This review originally appeared in our January/February issue of Mother Jones.