Awesome, enjoyable, mathy mind opening read, exactly the kind of nonfiction book I like reading. Please read it and ask me any questions you have about the math so I can explain it to you.

I love Ellenburg's style of blending the art of writing and telling a perspective with the science of mathematics and behavioral psychology. Ellenburg makes statistics and mathematics approachable to the lay individual and causes the clinician to challenges their assumptions. I view research and statistics in a new light since reading this book.


"Nonlinear thinking means which way you should go depends on where you already are."

"Standard methods of assessing results, the way we draw on our thersholds between a real phenomenon and random static, come under pressure in this era of massive data sets, effortlessly obtained."

"Human beings are quick to perceive patterns where they don't exist and to overestimate their strength where they do."

"We tend to like simpler theories better than more complicated ones, theories that rest on analogies to thinkgs we already know about better than theories that posit totally novel phenomenon."

"Believe whatever you believe by day, but at night, argue against the propositions you hold most dear."

I'm already always right so...

The math is fun, but why applying it to utterly uninteresting fields like gambling, religion and sports?!

This is the first book by a Slate columnist I've read that I actually liked. Although the second half departs from the premise of the title and I can't say I am more mathematically adept for having read it, I definitely feel like I understand certain concepts better than I did (if I even knew about them at all before).