Proofiness
The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception
by Charles Seife · first published 2010
6mentions
2recommended by
2HN commenters
2011–2019first – last mentioned
100% recommend
In the tradition of Stephen Colbert's concept of truthiness, Proofiness explores the intersection of chicanery and mathematics. The author explores regression, false correlation, Potemkin numbers, and a variety of other sketchy techniques used to make people think that the data reflect patterns that don't exist in actuality. How to Lie With Statistics would strike me as a readalike.
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…pulling out all of the actual things the author wanted to say, and then laying those out in a more cohesive fashion. For those interested in the abuse of numbers in rhetoric I can reccomend the book 'Proofiness' [1] which talks about ways people abuse mathematics as a rhetorical tool. Science is one of those things that also helps lay people feel better about believing in something. I agree with the original…
on “Why I Hate Science” ↗"Proofiness" : https://www.amazon.com/Proofiness-Youre-Being-Fooled-Numbers... It is also a common tread in books by Tufte : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte I like "Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities,…
on “Whom the Gods Would Destroy, They First Give Real-Time Analytics (2013)” ↗Recommended reading "Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception" by Seife. Talks about this fallacy and others in depth. The best approach is multi-variate analysis. Which is to say for each correlation you find, identify…
on “The Ecological Fallacy” ↗Sigh what a squishy article. What is the methodology? What is the sampling error? What does "OK" mean relative to "Good" ? This reminds me of the anecdotes in "Proofiness"[1] which talk about how the news industry figured out they could manufacture news by taking a poll. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Proofiness-Youre-Being-Fooled-Numbers/...
on “Apple Falls Behind Microsoft, Samsung, Sony In New Consumer Experience Survey” ↗…VC's that I've met don't usually take that level risk, they wait until there is at least some expectation that the team can deliver something (hence the MVP requirement in many series A rounds). [1] In "Proofiness: The Dark Arts of Mathematical Deception", Charles Seife claims that NASA asked GE to calculate the chances of success in the Moon Landing and came out with 5%. http://www.amazon.com/Proofiness-Dark-Arts-Mathematical-Dece...
on “99 Problems But Money Ain't One” ↗Exactly this, and then there are people who exploit this in order to skew perceptions as described in "Proofiness: How you're being fooled by the numbers."[1] [1] https://www.amazon.com/Proofiness-Youre-Being-Fooled-Numbers...
on “Mortgage Market Reopens to Risky Borrowers” ↗