Is statistics the most boring word ever?
I recently told a couple of close friends of mine that I had started reading 'The Art of Statistics' by David Spiegelhalter. It would be fair to say they weren't as interested in at as I was. One response read "you're so boring it physically pains me", while the other consisted of just three words" "that looks awful". It is also fair to say that those reactions are not particularly surprising. This is not to say my friends are idiots (I'm not not saying this) but more related to the world's relationship with numbers, stats, and data in general. In my experience, it's not a subject that excites people. I want that to change so I have a few examples of numbers actually being exciting. Everyone likes movies, right? Way more exciting than statistics. What about movies about statistics? Terrible? Nope. Ask anyone who has seen Moneyball. It is literally a film about data analysis. The whole plot is a story of how data analysis c...