Anthony Abbott

Summary

Key Insights

Media stories are often distorted by statistical ignorance or manipulation.

Power indexes like Banzhaf’s reveal voting power isn’t proportional to vote share.

Cumulative voting allows minorities better representation.

Cognitive biases such as the availability heuristic, anchoring, and the Oxford effect distort perception.

Casino design exploits psychological conditioning — wins get bells, losses silence.

Laffer Curve illustrates that both low and high taxes can reduce revenue.

Economics and weather systems are non-linear — small changes can have big effects.

Journalism’s inverted pyramid encourages oversimplification and premature certainty.

Zipf’s law shows the surprising order in word usage.

Conditional probabilities are easily misunderstood (e.g., Bayes’ fallacy).

Seemingly meaningful patterns may be random (e.g., coin-tossed chessboard).

People mistake accidents for negligence depending on the outcome.

Marketing and reporting often play tricks using scale — linear vs. volume emphasis.

Sample size is crucial in interpreting statistical results.

Wittgenstein’s quip shows how people seek corroboration in repetition, not verification.

Daniel Dennett’s game reveals how perception can be manipulated by secret rules.

Marvin Minsky’s “society of mind” sees the mind as many parts vying for control.

Jesse Shera critiques info-overload: “data, data everywhere, but not a thought to think.”

Bertrand Russell’s reminder: clarity and precision often conflict.

Risks need prioritisation — trivial risks absorb attention from serious ones.

Averages of averages can be misleading if sample sizes differ.

Con-artists exploit confirmation bias.

US survey about Holocaust denial was a false alarm — poorly worded question.

Historical skullduggery

Janet Cooke Scandal (1981)
Janet Cooke, a reporter for The Washington Post, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 for a harrowing article titled “Jimmy’s World”, which described an eight-year-old heroin addict in Washington, D.C. The story turned out to be entirely fabricated. When the truth emerged, Cooke was forced to return the Pulitzer Prize — the only time in history this has happened — and she resigned in disgrace. The scandal became a landmark case in journalistic ethics.

A man asks logician – is the lift going up or down. He replies: Yes

Dyscalculia – difficulty in understanding number

Beware of surveys: 1993 US survey found that 25% of people didn’t believe in the Holocaust. But on investigation it was found that the quesEon was ambiguous and contained a double negative. When rephr ased, fewer than 1% did.

Strengths

• Clear, engaging, and humorous.
• Helps readers become more critical consumers of news.
• Combines anecdotes, real examples, and theoretical insights well.
• Raises awareness of probabilistic and statistical reasoning.

Weaknesses

• Some statistical explanations might be too brief for readers unfamiliar with the basics.
• The book is more a collection of observations than a unified thesis.

Reflections

This is a compelling read for those interested in critical thinking, media literacy, or statistics. It sharpens the reader’s analytical skills and encourages scepticism of confidently asserted claims. Paulos shows how maths can reveal the hidden logic, or illogic, in daily journalism.

Conclusion

A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper offers essential tools for decoding the numerical and logical landscape of modern media. Though light in tone, it delivers a serious message: don’t just read the news, interrogate it.

Book Details

Title: A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper: Making Sense of the Numbers in the Headlines
Author: John Allen Paulos
Publication Year: 1996
Genre: Higher Education
Reference: Calandra Vol. 4 p. 13

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