Granted, thinking statistically is tricky. We like to construct simple cause-and-effect stories to explain the world as we experience it. “You need to train in this way of thinking. It’s not easy,” says John Allen Paulos, a Temple University mathematician.

That’s precisely the point. We often say, rightly, that literacy is crucial to public life: If you can’t write, you can’t think. The same is now true in math. Statistics is the new grammar.

Clive Thompson on Why We Should Learn the Language of Data in Wired Magazine








The TED Conference (Technology, Entertainment and Design) brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes.) Each conference is structured around an overarching idea. A TED Remix is a new juxtaposition of talks around a specific theme.


Related:
Hans Rosling: wiki, twitter, web
Chris Jordan: wiki, web
Tim Berners-Lee: wiki, twitter, web
Peter Donnelly: wiki
Sebastian Wernicke: web

Chris Jordan’s Running the Numbers: An American Self-portrait