August 22nd, 2007 at 3:31 am

Why are we often anxious about or even suspicious of statistics? Let’s take a look at this topic. Along with some interesting examples I’ve got some statistics-oriented jokes I hope you’ll find funny (okay, maybe you’ll just find them…interesting. Humor me). Conquer your fears this week on The Psych Files.

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Resources For This Podcast

• Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences by John Allen Paulus is a very interesting book. I highly recommend it.
• Michael Shermer’s book, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time is also an excellent book on the kinds of thinking that lead us astray. This is the book I mention in the podcast where Mr. Shermer took a tour through the Edgar Casey museum and took the ESP “test”.
• Carl Sagan’s book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, is also a very readable book regarding why we believe strange things.
• Correction: In the podcast I said that Mur Lafferty was the host of the Grammar Girl. Actually Mignon Fogarty is the host and here is the link to the Grammar Girl. Mur Lafferty is the host of another interesting podcast called I Should Be Writing. Here is the link to her podcast.
• Here is the TED talks presentation by Peter Donnelly. Fascinating.

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