“Two aristocrats are out horseback riding and one challenges the other to see which can come up with the larger number. The second agrees to the contest, concentrates for a few minutes, and proudly announces, ‘Three.’ The proposer of the game is quiet for half an hour, then finally shrugs and concedes defeat.”
-- Professor of Mathematics John Allen Paulos, “Innumeracy” (Hill and Wang 1988)
There is no better go-to source of wisdom and insight in our complex and data-overloaded world than the weekly column in the Financial Times by economist Tim Harford. His latest book, “How to Make the World Add Up” (Bridge Street Press 2020, 294 pp.), now joins his others on my reference shelf.
Harford has accomplished the remarkable – delivering, under the guise of a work on coping with the complexities of statistics and quantitative information, accessible guidance grounded in principles of human psychology and behavior.
Sympathy for his project is in order. It would have been on the verge of completion, early in 2020 when the pandemic broke out. Frustration would have been matched by opportunity – necessary re-writing in context of a quintessential case for the necessity to gather and assess best-quality data.
It would have been his challenge that, even as the world struggled to contain the virus, issues of incomplete and unreliable information were from the outset and continue to be pervasive – on the numbers of infections, hospitalizations, and deaths; the demand and provisions for testing and protective equipment; and the scope and magnitude of job losses and business failures. Data failings in all these areas continue to confound the design and application of strategies for mitigation, containment and recovery.
Credit to Harford that his book survived a Black Swan’s fly-over. Sympathy too, for the pressures of last minute revising to preserve the book’s structure while addressing a global crisis evolving on a daily basis. There are the occasional faint palimpsests of red-pencil attention -– imagine “note to self -- insert COVID reference here.” Happily for readers, they do not impede his narrative arc -– a set of behavioral “rules” by which readers are invited to gain confidence in their ability to penetrate the confusion that otherwise beclouds complex statistics-laden situations.
Not a math geek? Intimidated by the difference between mean and median? Fear not. Harford writes in a non-technical vocabulary, advocating the importance of disciplined means to avoid conclusions or decisions that are hasty, under-evaluated or overconfident:
Be curious – be skeptical – recognize and manage the impact of your emotions – be aware of your fallibility.
Neither is his set of tools unfamiliar:
Beware the wrong metrics – avoid jumping to hasty conclusions – do not be led by such biases as survivorship or over-confidence – insist on the integrity of both data and their presentation.
In our time these appeals go back to the 1970s and the pioneering work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, and such antecedents as Michel de Montaigne’s self-searching essays in the 16th century.
And those standing on the broad shoulders of Kahneman and Tversky have seen far in many fields. Their insights inform successors such as Philip Tetlock and Richard Thaler – also “big data” explorer Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, physicist Richard Feynman, sociologist and systems researcher Charles Perrow, and information design genius Edward Tufte.
Point of disclosure: I did not come to Harford’s work without a perspective of my own. The influential thinkers just mentioned figure in my advice to clients, and populate the syllabus of my graduate-level course in Risk Management and Decision Making. That raises the possibility of a self-reinforcing prejudice in Harford’s favor – the very emotional response that he himself takes pains to warn against.
I feel no need to confess error and recant. Some time ago I forswore reviewing books I would not recommend, and my enthusiasm for Harford is openly declared. Inconsistency with his advice would be both unironic and so minor as not to impair this proposal -- that as a primer for those seeking assistance, or as reinforcement for those already engaged, Harford’s very appealing book does a favor and is worthy of attention.
Thanks for joining this dialog. Please share with friends and colleagues. Comments are invited and welcome, and subscription sign-up is easy and free – both at the Main page.
Comments