Numbers have become the all-powerful language of public argument. Too often, that power is abused and the numbers bamboozle. This book shows how to see straight through them – and how to seize the power for yourself.
Public spending, health risks, environmental disasters, who is rich, who is poor, Aids or war deaths, pensions, teenage offenders, the best and worst schools and hospitals, immigration – life comes in numbers. The trick to seeing through them is strikingly simple. It is to apply something everyone has – the lessons of their own experience.
Using vivid and everyday images and ideas, this book shows how close to hand insight and understanding can be, and how we can all use what is familiar to make sense of what is baffling. It is also a revelation – of how little the principles are understood even by many who claim to know better.
This book is written by the team who created and present the hugely popular BBC Radio 4 series, More or Less.