Library:Proofiness
| Proofiness: How You're Being Fooled by the Numbers | |
|---|---|
| Author | Charles Seife |
| First published | 2010 |
| ISBN | 978-0-670-02216-8 |
| Role | Analysis |
| Domains | Politics & Elections Science & Environment |
| Tactics | Statistical & Evidentiary Distortion |
Proofiness: How You're Being Fooled by the Numbers is a 2010 book by Charles Seife.
Summary
Charles Seife, a journalism professor at New York University and former science writer, published this book in 2010. He coined the word "proofiness" for the use of misleading mathematical arguments to make something false seem true. The book shows how numbers, because they seem objective, are among the most effective tools of deception.
Why numbers persuade
Seife argues that numbers carry an aura of truth. People assume that anything stated as a figure must have been measured carefully. That assumption makes numbers a perfect disguise for nonsense, and it makes people reluctant to challenge them.
The techniques
Seife names a series of techniques. "Potemkin numbers" are figures with no real basis, presented as facts; his example is Senator Joseph McCarthy's claim to hold a list of a specific number of communists in the State Department. "Disestimation" treats a measurement as more precise than it can be, ignoring the uncertainty in all measurements; he illustrates it with a museum guard who claims a dinosaur skeleton is sixty-five million and three years old because he was told sixty-five million years three years ago. "Fruit packing" covers several ways of presenting real data deceptively, including cherry-picking favourable figures and comparing things that are not truly comparable. Seife also addresses how people misjudge randomness and risk.
Democracy by the numbers
The book's most distinctive chapters concern elections and government. Seife examines the extremely close 2008 US Senate race in Minnesota, arguing that the margin of victory was smaller than the error inherent in counting votes, so that the "winner" was effectively decided by chance and legal argument rather than by a measurable majority. He also examines political fights over how to conduct the US census, the drawing of electoral districts and the misuse of opinion polls.
The danger
Seife argues that proofiness is especially dangerous in public life because it allows political and legal decisions to be justified by numbers that do not mean what they appear to mean. Courts, legislators and journalists often lack the mathematical understanding to challenge them.
Relevance to Bullshitopedia
This book is a key reference for the Statistical & Evidentiary Distortion tactic and the Politics & Elections domain. Its point that every measurement carries uncertainty is an important standard for how claim entries should report figures.