Numbers Lie. How Not to Let Statistics Deceive You

Reading at night shortens life. Video games provoke mass shootings. Soda makes people aggressive. What?! No!

Every day the media writes about sensational discoveries and shocking research results. But not all of them can be trusted: statistical errors, deliberate falsifications, and non-obvious flaws still exist.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, humanity has had to take an accelerated course in statistics: now we are quite good at understanding graphs, have heard something about normal distribution, and are familiar with the survival bias. But we still have a lot to learn: how do mathematical models work? What are the differences between absolute and relative risks? What do rankings say? What is the Texas sharpshooter fallacy? Science journalist Tom Chivers and economics lecturer at Durham University David Chivers use examples from the sensational headlines of the COVID era to show how not to be deceived by numbers.