By: Daron George on November 12, 2022
The book How to Read Numbers: A Guide to Statistics in the News (and Knowing When to Trust Them) is an enlightening guide to the numbers we read in the news and why they are so often misleading. The author’s Tom Chivers and David Chivers make sense of dense material and offer insights into sampling…
By: Michael O'Neill on November 12, 2022
How to Read Numbers by Tom and David Shivers uncovered many statistical perspectives, and anomalies depending on the point of view. The book was insightful, and detailed, and provided a beneficial recap of many math courses from my past. I enjoyed unraveling statistical positioning however I noticed a variant in my personal synopsis almost immediately.…
By: Shonell Dillon on November 11, 2022
What year was it when this author put pen to paper? I don’t want to misinterpret but is he saying that racism is not really a problem anymore. I might not get to five hundred words on this one. So many thoughts run through my head as I agree with some of what he is…
By: Shonell Dillon on November 11, 2022
I am a music buff. I love love love music. In certain genre’s I can belt out every oh and ah that comes out of the artist mouth. I guess you can say when it comes to some music I am a lyricsmith. I am careful to sing the words at the right time and…
By: Audrey Robinson on November 11, 2022
How to Read Numbers: A Guide to Statistics in the News (and Knowing When to Trust Them) was written as a clarion call for journalists and other professionals who regularly use numbers to report and inform the public to be more intentional in their statistical math accuracy. Tom Chivers, a science writer for UnHerd, a…
By: Alana Hayes on November 10, 2022
Have you ever heard the phrase that 99 % of statistics are made up? The joke is that you can throw any number you want in there because numbers hold no relevancy in statistics. I’m not saying that generalization is accurate, but I do wonder if that phrase came about because the mainstream population didn’t…
By: Tonette Kellett on November 10, 2022
You Can Catch Alzheimer’s “You Can Catch Alzheimer’s” the headline reads. It goes on to explain it spreads during surgeries and blood transfusions, however, the headline is obviously misleading and disturbing. A questionable study was performed that led to this conclusion. One can only wonder if this is an anecdotal study [1], or about the…
By: Chad McSwain on November 10, 2022
“I told ya’ll!” That was the declaration during our car ride as my friend exuberantly pointed out that he is the winner of the bet, and that he is (almost) always right. The latest bet was on the price of pomegranate at Wal-Mart and who can guess the closest price. The bet ensued to raise…
By: David Beavis on November 10, 2022
“The more you see, the less you know. The less you find out as you go. I knew much more then, than I do now.” These opening lyrics to U2’s City of Blinding Lights constantly ran through my mind as I read Tom and David Chivers’ How to Read Numbers.[1] Countless articles, statistics, and “facts”…
By: Shonell Dillon on November 9, 2022
One of my favorite groups the O’Jay’s has a hit song that has a line in it that says… Money, Money, Money. The lyrics go on to say,” some people got to have it, some people really need it”. I thought of this song as we were told we would be reading about Bitcoin. My…
By: Becca Hald on November 9, 2022
“Your son has autism.” When I first heard those words in 2004, I had no idea what they meant. Autism? You mean like Rain Man? I felt a sense of relief that the behavioral issues we had seen were not “my fault.” I felt a sense of empowerment, I could do something to help my…
By: Shonell Dillon on November 9, 2022
The title being “Leading out of who you are” brings up a question of “who are you”? The authors writes about the undefended leader. He states that “Leadership is about who you are and less about what you know or the skill you have”.[1] This to me indicates that being a leader is already inside…
By: Jean de Dieu Ndahiriwe on November 8, 2022
How to Read Numbers: A Guide to Statistics in the News must be fascinating and insightful. It was very hard to find a good eBook copy anywhere online or a more detailed review as on many other books covered before. As I struggled to find the book summaries online in vain, I remembered my own…
By: Jenny Steinbrenner Hale on November 7, 2022
At first glance, I thought Tom and David Chivers’ book on understanding numbers and stats in the news looked like a dry read. I checked it out of the library, fully expecting to return it when I was done and not read it again. However, How to Read Numbers, A Guide to Stats in the…
By: Sara Taylor Lattimore on November 7, 2022
In the world of networking and job searching we often hear the phrase, its not what you know but who you know tossed around when a job rejection comes across the table or a job offer for that matter. Advocated for networking will also point out this deep connection between knowing people and success. In…
By: Kristy Newport on November 6, 2022
There is a well-known story that is told of a little boy (or little girl, according to the adaption of the story) who was walking along a vast beach, throwing starfish back into the ocean. Many starfish populated the beach because the tide had washed them up onto the shore. An old man approaches the…
By: Shonell Dillon on November 5, 2022
The author spoke about the dividing of our thinking into subsystems. He described that there was two subsystems that exist. The first subsystem was type one thinking.This thinking consist of being able to think through a thing with little to no effort. On the other hand there is type two thinking, which requires you to…
By: Laura Fleetwood on November 5, 2022
What could our world look like if leaders removed their defensive armor and led from a posture of service instead of power? That’s the question I found myself pondering as I read Leading out of Who You Are by Simon P. Walker. In this leadership book, Walker describes the difference between a defended leader (prioritizing…
By: Chad McSwain on November 5, 2022
I have been having some fun trying to convince the people in my Sunday School class that they are on a Hero’s Journey. We are looking at the life of Moses, and inspired by A Hero with a Thousand Faces [1], I have invited them to consider the journey Moses was on in the first…
By: Daron George on November 5, 2022
In the book Leading out of Who You Are author Simon P. Walker addresses our leadership not from a practical nuts and bolts view but from an internal view. Walker encourages us to be deeply aware of ourselves, our background and our relationships with others. Walker says that “Leadership is about who you are, not…
