Counting: How We Use Numbers To Decide What Matters

By:

Sign Up Now! Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into Bookshare to access this title. Learn about membership options, or view our freely available titles.

Synopsis
“Deborah Stone’s mind-altering insight is that the numbers we use to capture the human experience are themselves a form of creative story-telling. They shouldn’t end the conversation, but spark a deeper and richer one. Counting deserves five stars for showing why five stars can never tell the whole story.” —Jacob S. Hacker, co-author of Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality What do people do when they count? What do numbers really mean? We all know that people can lie with statistics, but in this groundbreaking work, eminent political scientist Deborah Stone uncovers a much deeper problem. With help from Dr. Seuss and Cookie Monster, she explains why numbers can’t be objective: in order to count, one must first decide what counts. Every number is the ending to a story built on cultural assumptions, social conventions, and personal judgments. And yet, in this age of big data and metric mania, numbers shape almost every facet of our lives: whether we get hired, fired, or promoted; whether we get into college or out of prison; how our opinions are gathered and portrayed to politicians; or how government designs health and safety regulations. In warm and playful prose, Counting explores what happens when we measure nebulous notions like merit, race, poverty, pain, or productivity. When so much rides on numbers, they can become instruments of social welfare, justice, and democracy—or not. The citizens of Flint, Michigan, for instance, used numbers to prove how their household water got contaminated and to force their government to take remedial action. In stark contrast, the Founding Fathers finessed an intractable conflict by counting each slave as three-fifths of a person in the national census. They set a terrible precedent for today’s politicians who claim to solve moral and political dilemmas with arithmetic. Suffused with moral reflection and ending with a powerful epilogue on COVID-19’s dizzying statistics, Counting will forever change our relationship with numbers.
Copyright:
2020

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
Book Size:
312 Pages
ISBN-13:
9781631495939
Related ISBNs:
9781324091066, 9781631495922
Publisher:
Liveright
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Deborah Stone
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
Nonfiction, Psychology, Mathematics and Statistics, Politics and Government, Sociology
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

Reviews

No Rating Yet