“We are too easily seduced by explanations for the inexplicable,” writes the author in this amusing, informative account of...
Another in the genre that began with the Darrell Huff’s 1954 best-seller, How to Lie with Statistics. If history is any guide, it will likely be ignored by those who do the lying.
In his first book for nonacademic readers, Smith (Economics/Pomona Coll.; Essential Statistics, Regression, and Econometrics, 2011, etc.) delivers an entertaining primer on his specialty, packed with figures, tables, graphs and ludicrous examples from people who know better (academics, scientists) and those who don’t (political candidates, advertisers). “We live in the age of Big Data….Sometimes these omnipresent data and magnificent computers lead to some pretty outlandish discoveries,” writes the author. We hear that children who play competitive sports are confident, so sports must build character. Selection bias makes nonsense of this if only confident children choose to play competitive sports. Enthusiasts tell us how to live to the age of 100, run a profitable business or enjoy a lasting marriage. However, all examine those who have succeeded, ignoring the losers, so survivorship bias renders their advice worthless. Few can resist the fallacious law of averages. If a coin flip turns up 10 heads in a row, the 11th flip is not more likely to be tails. If you fly regularly, the odds that your plane will crash do not increase. Good and bad luck do not even out. Chance is just chance. The Texas sharpshooter peppers the side of a barn and then draws a bull’s eye around the densest clump of holes. In other words, even honest observers find patterns in random data and can’t resist explaining them. We believe these stories if they seem reasonable and love them if they’re provocative—see Freakonomics, whose authors have admitted some mistakes.
“We are too easily seduced by explanations for the inexplicable,” writes the author in this amusing, informative account of how many arguments are backed by meaningless statistics.Pub Date: July 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4683-0920-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
This academic exploration of female sexuality is marred by a facile categorization of feminists. Sexologist McCormick (Psychology/State Univ. of New York, Plattsburgh; Changing Boundaries: Gender Roles and Sexual Behavior, not reviewed) simplistically defines feminists as either ``Liberal'' or ``Radical.'' She constructs the former as focused on women's sexual pleasure and the latter as concerned with protecting girls and women from sexual abuse and exploitation. Placing her work as outside the typical model of sex research centered on white, middle-class heterosexual women, McCormick seeks to widen her readers' conception of female sexuality with her discussion of seduction, intimacy, lesbians and bisexuals, female sex-trade workers, pornography, and models of pleasure and fulfillment. She challenges the popular belief that sex should have orgasm as its goal, asserting that it denies many women their sexuality, especially those who are paralyzed or otherwise disabled. In the context of her research, McCormick encourages us to move beyond the ``dehumanizing [equation of] sexuality with genital juxtapositions and intercourse'' and to view sexuality as ``a whole body and whole mind experience.'' She is at her strongest in her explorations of women sex-trade workers, sexual victimization, and pornography; she advocates the legalization of prostitution and the creation of erotic material that affirms women's sexuality. Unfortunately, McCormick has a tendency to idealize women as more sentimental, affectionate, and desirous of intimacy than men. She sees female sexuality as almost spiritual, which leads her to make some extravagant generalizations. She suggests, for instance, that lesbians value intimacy more than sex, that loving lesbian relationships work better than gay or straight relationships, and while she lists the dangers faced by female participants in the sex-trade industry, she tends to glamorize their agency. A flawed but sometimes astute analysis of power and sexual relations.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-275-94359-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Praeger
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
Eminently useful, although somewhat contradictory, this admiring intellectual biography of an iconoclastic psychoanalyst recapitulates the strengths and weaknesses of its subject's thought. Karen Horney (18851952) played a key role in the development of psychoanalysis between the wars and transcended her discipline as a feminist thinker. Horney scholar Paris (English/Univ. of Florida) surveys the psychoanalyst's ideas while locating their sources in her personal experiences. He builds on the work of previous biographers Jack Rubins (Karen Horney, 1978) and Susan Quinn (A Mind of Her Own, not reviewed), who brought messy details of Horney's life to light without, he contends, fully relating them to her mature theory. For Paris, Horney's ideas represent her effort to come to grips with her own problems—to perform, as her best-known title has it, a ``self-analysis.'' After a lucid account of Horney's youth in Germany, Paris treats her early, relatively orthodox essays and her subsequent development of a theory of feminine psychology. He shows how pondering social concerns led Horney to consider the cultural dimensions of neurosis and eventually to develop a new paradigm of psychological structure as a complete, ongoing system, rather than an individual story only understandable through recourse to its occluded origins. Her adult life was thorny: Paris discusses her ``female Don Juanism,'' her battles in the bitter psychoanalytic arena, and her difficult affairs with famed rivals like Erich Fromm. Extensive commentaries on Horney's late thought tie these strands together, focusing on ideas about pride and defense strategies expressed in Our Inner Conflicts and Neurosis and Human Growth. Throughout, Paris maintains allegiance to Horney's conviction that we each have a true inner self, even while he depicts stark discontinuities among the facets of her own personality. It will take a grander synthesis than his, one that incorporates wider historical and cultural context, to really resolve this tension between Horney's thought and life. In the interim, however, this serves as a fine introduction to a stimulating thinker whose influence continues to rise as therapy becomes more pragmatic and less dogmatic.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-300-05956-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
