Bob Mather

Statistics for Beginners Bob Mather

Big Brother is watching you. Discover how statistics can be used to control our society.
Have you ever wondered what your neighbor does every morning at 8:35 am, when you hear weird sounds coming from his balcony?

Did you ever realize that the "likes" you put on other people´s Instagram account will influence the next summer collection of Zara, H& M and Nike?

Are you aware that whenever you swipe your credit card in the supermarket, you are not only paying with money, but you are giving valuable personal data away for free?

The science of collecting, analyzing and interpreting data became a powerful tool to get useful information about humans and their environment.

Personal data has more value than ever and yet you leave terabytes of it for free on your devices or floating around in your cloud.

Not only do Google and Facebook harvest billions from using your data for advertising, but talented hackers have also created a luxurious living from stealing and selling your data.
By now our entire world is build around reliable statistics.
Ummm. Reliable?

If I tell you baldness raises the cardiovascular disease risk up to 70%, it is a true fact.
What I forgot to mention is baldness and old age are related. So what is the cause of cardiovascular diseases? Baldness or old age?
Statistics can be misleading and manipulating.
Yet there are incredible examples of how statistics helped to solve crimes and find a serial killer.