Proofiness - Charles Seife [0]
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
Chapter 1 - Phony Facts, Phony Figures
Chapter 2 - Rorschach’s Demon
Chapter 3 - Risky Business
Chapter 4 - Poll Cats
Chapter 5 - Electile Dysfunction
Chapter 6 - An Unfair Vote
Chapter 7 - Alternate Realities
Chapter 8 - Propaganda by the Numbers
Acknowledgements
Appendix A: Statistical Error
Appendix B: Electronic Voting
Appendix C: The Prosecutor’s Fallacy
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ALSO BY CHARLES SEIFE
Sun in a Bottle
Decoding the Universe
Alpha & Omega
Zero
VIKING
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First published in 2010 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Charles Seife, 2010
All rights reserved
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
Figure 1: Quaker Oats (redrawn for clarity)
Figures 5 and 6: Journal of Neuropathology & Experimental Neurology
(Figure 6 redrawn for clarity)
Figures 7 and 9: Nature Publishing Group
Figure 8: Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Seife, Charles.
Proofiness : the dark arts of mathematical deception / Charles Seife.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-1-101-44350-7
1. Mathematics—Miscellanea. 2. Pseudoscience. I. Title.
QA99.S45 2010
510—dc22 2010012127
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INTRODUCTION
Proofiness
The American mind seems extremely vulnerable to the belief that any alleged knowledge which can be expressed in figures is in fact as final and exact as the figures in which it is expressed.
—Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
“In my opinion the State Department, which is one of the most important government departments, is thoroughly infested with communists.”
This was not the sentence—delivered to a small gathering of West Virginia women—that catapulted the little-known Wisconsin senator into the public spotlight. It was the next one.
As he held aloft a sheaf of papers, a beetle-browed Joe McCarthy assured his place in the history books with his bold claim: “I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.”
That number—205—was a jolt of electricity that shocked Washington into action against communist infiltrators. Never mind that the number was a fabrication. It went up to 207 and then dropped