What Are the Odds?

An exhilarating tour of the data that drives our world and how to make it work for all of us.

Our world is awash in data. Streaming services track our viewing and listening habits to recommend movies and playlists. Government agencies analyse our credit card transactions to estimate the size of the economy. And artificial intelligence trains on massive quantities of text to answer the questions we ask it. If we want to understand how this deluge of information shapes our lives and even harness it ourselves to make smarter decisions, then we need statistics.

In What Are the Odds? Mark Prell shows that statistics consists of two interwoven strands: data and analysis. Just as important as asking what the data say is asking how reliable the data are. Through stories of centuries of statistical ingenuity, Prell teaches us how to apply the core concepts and methods of statistical thinking to determine the effectiveness of vaccines, build infrastructure to protect against natural disasters, and even plan for retirement.

We learn how to avoid spurious reasoning and, just as important, how to recognise and improve data that have been cherry-picked, falsified, or are just plain wrong. As Prell argues, becoming a statistician, even an amateur one, is about more than manipulating data—it's about joining a community of statisticians committed to truth and integrity.