By: Chad Warren on February 8, 2024
We got a puppy this week. A routine trip to Walmart resulted in some potato chips, toothpaste, shampoo and a 9 week old Mini GoldenDoodle named Sullivan that we purchased from a nice lady in the parking lot. In light of reading How to Make the World Add Up by Tim Harford I decided to…
By: Christy on February 8, 2024
I’m a data nerd at heart – always have been. When I was a kid, I had to do the dishes as my chore. I would have fun timing myself to see if I could beat my previous record of loading or unloading the dishwasher. Today, I’m still tempted to collect data for household chores,…
By: Cathy Glei on February 8, 2024
“Gone are the days when dumb, insensitive, or offensive teenage mishaps were forgotten or simply disappeared. Their extensive digital record makes Gen Z the most cancelable cohort, and that makes modern adolescence kind of nightmarish. The ever-present threat of being canceled harms friendships, undermines trust, and fosters paranoia. And it’s certainly not helping the record…
By: Jennifer Eckert on February 8, 2024
My professional career was launched at a state-level public health agency where I was part of a small team that led Oklahoma’s anti-tobacco movement. For thirteen years, I worked alongside thousands of allies to collect and analyze data to pass public policies that would reduce tobacco use and improve health. In How to Make the…
By: Jenny Dooley on February 8, 2024
In the early 1980s when I was an undergraduate student at a large state university, I had several unsettling experiences in which it felt unwise to express a different point of view. To publicly disagree, raise alternative perspectives, or refer to my faith was risky. In my naivete I thought university would be a respectful…
By: Akwese on February 8, 2024
In a world where we tend to be either overly suspicious or not suspicious enough of the research and statistics at the core of many of our beliefs, Tim Harford’s “The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics” offers a solution for how to find a healthy balance where we learn to…
By: Mathieu Yuill on February 8, 2024
Do you have a personal story – or a story of someone close to you who has been on the edge of being canceled? Anecdotally in my world it seems everyone can either tell of a moment they were on the verge of being accused of something or know someone who was accused of something…
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…
