By: Elysse Burns on February 8, 2024
As I mulled over Tim Harford’s How to Make the World Add Up, I was transported to my undergraduate classes when I was a naïve business student. Sitting in a business law class, we had just finished the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and I felt physically ill from the information learned.…
By: Debbie Owen on February 7, 2024
I had been listening carefully to my spiritual directee for most of the last half hour. Let’s call her Paula. Paula had had a lot of challenges in her adult life. Because of this, she was struggling to think of God as a Father she could trust. She felt like it was always “me, myself,…
By: Chris Blackman on February 7, 2024
The pastor of a mega-church that Nancy and I once attended was a phenomenal speaker (although, with 20 years gone by and seminary under my belt, I would push back on many things he said). The one thing I appreciated about him was that at the end of every sermon, he would look out at…
By: Nancy Blackman on February 7, 2024
Anytime I see a book title with the word “numbers” in it I run away as quickly as I can. Far, far away. I have never been fond of numbers, but interestingly, Tim Harford refers to this as a sense of naïve realism, where we “confuse our own perspective with something more universal.” [1] In…
By: Diane Tuttle on February 7, 2024
When I first started reading Tim Harford’s book How to Make the World Add Up, I thought, ah, this read will be a breeze. I agree with Harford’s premise that statistics can give us valuable information. At first glance, his ten rules for thinking about statistics seemed straightforward and easy. Early in my career, I…
By: Graham English on February 7, 2024
“How to Make The World Add Up” is a book about how to look at statistics and how we might be able to navigate the sea of numbers that bombard us every day. We often make significant decisions, based on the numbers, so it’s helpful to have a framework to work with that can help…
By: Shela Sullivan on February 6, 2024
I was eager to read, [1] “How to Make the World Add Up: Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers” by Tim Harford. Numbers intimidate me. My history with math exams in school and college was challenging, but upon reading the reviews, I convinced myself that it was time to overcome my intimidation of numbers…
By: Esther Edwards on February 6, 2024
In 2021, the Dr. Seuss Foundation voluntarily pulled several books from print due to racial and ethnic stereotypes which caused quite a backlash in the children’s literary community as well as with the many fans that still adore Dr. Seuss’s writings. An article, “Dr. Seuss Books are Pulled, and a ‘Cancel Culture’ Controversy Erupts” put…
By: Adam Cheney on February 6, 2024
I have four teenage daughters living at home. Thus, the iconic star – Taylor Swift, is a topic of discussion around our dinner table almost nightly. This week we have seen a collision of the political world and pop culture, all centering around Taylor Swift. Now, I am not a closet Swiftie (A person who…
By: Glyn Barrett on February 6, 2024
How to Make the World Add Up by Tim Harford caused me to reflect on my experience leading a growing and diverse church over the past sixteen years. In 2007, we planted a church in central Manchester in the north of England. We initially began with ninety people, and after six or seven weeks, the…
By: Russell Chun on February 6, 2024
مسیحی منصرف شده در کلرادو اسپرینگز., Cancelled Christian in Colorado Springs (Arabic) Part 1: Introduction/I think I have been cancelled! Part 2: What I gleaned from Greg Part 3: What my peers are saying Epilogue Part 1: I think I have been cancelled When I came to Colorado Springs in 2021, I was dead…
By: Kim Sanford on February 6, 2024
“Cancel culture” has always seemed to be one of those terms that everybody uses differently. Ask ten people what it means, and you’ll get ten different answers. This coupled with the fact that many examples of canceling seem happen to celebrities and/or public figures, I’ve never really given too much thought to cancel culture. This…
By: Tim Clark on February 5, 2024
From elementary age until I was a young adult, Bill Cosby provided me with hundreds of hours of entertainment. From watching the animated series “Fat Albert” on Saturday mornings, to belly laughing while listening to vinyl comedy albums (remember those?) to my standing appointment with “must-see TV” that kicked off every Thursday at 8p with…
By: Jennifer Vernam on February 5, 2024
What is so distinctive about this point in time that earns it the designation of being a “Cancel Culture?” Surely, there have been other times when society has been strongly rewarded for complying with a norm and penalized for going against the grain. These thoughts and more were in my mind as I sat to…
By: John Fehlen on February 5, 2024
I have a bad case of jet lag. Really bad. I experienced it going TO Europe a few weeks ago, and I got it again coming BACK to Oregon a few days ago. I didn’t think it would affect my return trip, because I was drinking lots of water, holding off bedtime, and doing all…
By: Ryan Thorson on February 5, 2024
Hartford’s book is helping me make my world add up. I have the great joy and privilege of being a pastor of a local church in the Northwest. I’ve been pastoring here for nearly 12 years and have pastored people through the highs and lows of their lives, my life, a global pandemic and presidential…
By: Travis Vaughn on February 5, 2024
As I write this, I’m pondering Bobby Duffy’s Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything, reminding myself that “the world…is frequently not anywhere near as bad as we think.”[1] But even if we ARE wrong about a lot of things, the effects of Cancel Culture are real, particularly on college campuses, especially over the past several…
By: Jeff Styer on February 5, 2024
I read Tim Harford’s book How to Make the World Add Up and listened to two lectures that he gave in Oxford[1]. As I read and listened, I asked myself two questions, how do these relate to the other books we have read, and how do they relate to leadership. I am going to process…
By: Pam Lau on February 5, 2024
For my post, I wrote a hypothetical letter to leaders in Christian higher education believing that things can and will improve–based on the solutions our readings suggest. A Letter Written on the Walls of Higher Education Dear Christian Higher Education Administration, Whenever I read books like The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Undermines…
By: Kally Elliott on February 5, 2024
In The Canceling of the American Mind: How Cancel Culture Undermines Trust, Destroys Institutions, and Threatens Us All, Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott focus on what has become known as “cancel culture,”: how it began, its destructive effects, and how to push back against it. How did Cancel Culture come about and what is…
