Reddit reviews A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

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You may or may not be aware that innumeracy is a bit of a problem in this country and journalists are no exception. John Allen Paulos wrote a whole book about it: A mathematician reads the newspaper. So my goal in posing that question was to learn whether this person could make sense of the available data independently or would need more "support." This is not "attacking" someone; it's "getting to know your audience."

I'm not sure which parts of my note struck you as "angry" or "slightly crazy," but that's your opinion and you're entitled to it. Having been burned before by the BS editors, I'm not eager to repeat the exercise.

You're absolutely right that $100 is not nearly enough to compensate someone for the work that this story will require. If my questions have prevented someone from doing a half-assed job, then that's probably a good thing.

Anything by Simon Singh is worth reading. In addition to what others have recommended, these books are good:

[The man who loved only numbers](http://www.amazon.com/MAN-WHO-LOVED-ONLY-NUMBERS/dp/0786884061/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254333710&sr=8-1
)

Flatland

Prisoner's Dilemma

A mathematician reads the newspaper

A mathematician plays the stock market

Innumeracy: mathematical illiteracy and its consequences

Also, while not exactly about Maths:

Surely you are joking, Mr Feynman

What do you care what other people think?

The Art of Computer Programming

While I haven't read any of his other books, I can definitely recommend A Mathematcian Reads the Newspaper by John Allen Paulos.

Key word is thorough. Prob and stat is actually very intuitive, the issue is that that intuition must be built from the ground up. Most university courses fail in this respect.

Let me recommend some good, useful, and fun to read books for you: Innumeracy, Beyond Numeracy, and probably most importantly A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper all by John Allen Paulos. He's sort of a pop-math author I would consider analogous to Carl Sagan for numbers.

Those statistics are bunk. Even taking them at face value without looking at the sources, if you are trying to minimize the risk of death you would not want to look at all accidents you would want to look at the ones that lead to a fatality while driving. An overwhelming majority of those rear end collisions are just fender benders or trunk benders with only minor injuries. The consequences of a direct side impact are much more dire.

Read something like this

or this if you are curious about lying with statistics.