About the Book — While everyone is talking about “big data,” the truth is that understanding the “little data” (stock reports, newspaper headlines, weather forecasts, etc.) is what will help you make smarter decisions at work, at home, and in every aspect of your life.
The average person consumes approximately 30 gigabytes of data every single day, but has no idea how to interpret it correctly. Everydata explains, through the eyes of an expert economist and statistician, how to correctly interpret all of the small bytes of data we consume in a day. Readers will become effective, skeptical consumers of everyday data.
Everydata is filled with countless examples of people misinterpreting data – oftentimes with catastrophic results:
- Millions of women avoid caffeine during pregnancy because they interpret correlation as causation
- The initial launch of HealthCare.gov failed in part because key decision-makers couldn’t observe all of the data
- A baby food company was investigated by the Federal Trade Commission for cherry picking data
- Attorneys faced a $1 billion jury verdict because of outlier data
- The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded because the engineers were dealing with a limited sample set
- Hedge fund companies claim they can make smarter predictions – but the market data says otherwise
Each chapter of Everydata highlights one commonly misunderstood data concept, using both real-world and hypothetical examples from a wide range of topics, including business, politics, advertising, law, engineering, retail, parenting, and more. Readers will get the answer to the question – “Now what?” – along with concrete ways they can use this information to immediately start making smarter decisions, today and every day.
About the Author — Dr. John H. Johnson, IV is an expert witness who has testified and consulted in cases involving how one uses and interprets data in a wide range of settings. As CEO and co-founder of Edgeworth Economics – a leading consulting firm with offices in Washington, DC, San Francisco, and Pasadena – John heads a data-driven company that has been featured on NPR, the Washington Post, USA Today, and HuffPost Live.
As an economist and statistician, John specializes in teaching people how to be informed data consumers. He has spoken to audiences at the American Bar Association and the Federal Trade Commission, has taught at Georgetown University, and has been published in numerous books, journals, and magazines. His Ph.D. in econometrics is from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
