Truth Addict : How to Ask Questions, Test Ideas, and Get Answers in a Data-Driven World.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kane, John Victor.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (282 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, 2026.

Summary:

Foreword by Charles Wheelan, author of New York Times bestseller Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data What makes some evidence strong, some evidence weak, and some evidence total nonsense? Truth Addict is your guide to answers. Individuals, policymakers, and businesses across the globe want to make decisions based on evidence. But not all evidence is created equal. Truth Addict is the layperson's guide to data, truth, and the gap between them. Whether it's collected through laboratory experiments or public surveys, market research or archival records, data has a story to tell us--but only if we can read it. Drawing on engaging examples, John V. Kane details the logic of gathering and analyzing data as a means of getting us closer to the truth, even if the truth hurts. Developing research questions. Defining variables. Choosing metrics. Testing hypotheses. Quantifying relationships. Ruling out chance. Considering alternative explanations. Knowing not just that "correlation does not equal causation," but also how to tell the difference. These are key steps along Kane's "Road to Evidence," a journey that begins with curiosity and ends at objective knowledge. You don't have to be a math whiz to study our social world--Truth Addict provides every reader tools to uncover the reality within the numbers.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

List of Illustrations

Foreword by Charles Wheelan

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Level 1: A Problem of Motivation

1. What Are We Talking About?

2. Motivated to Believe (What We Want to Be True)

3. Aiming for Accuracy (Even When the Truth Hurts)

Level 2: It All Begins With a Question

4. Asking the Right Questions

5. Research Questions Have Two Variables We Care About

6. First Formulate, Then Fixate

Level 3: Learning The Lingo, Loving The Logic

7. Homing In On a Hypothesis

8. The Mechanism Matters

9. Design Intelligently

10. Out of the Sky and into the Spreadsheet

11. Comparison, the Giver of Knowledge

Level 4: Finding Meaning in The Findings

12. The Numbers We Really Care About

13. Go Figures

14. Wrestling with Randomness

15. Sizing Up the Results

Level 5: Data, Data Everywhere, Now Let Us Stop To Think

16. Separating the Three C's-Coincidence, Correlation, and Causation

17. Reading Results in Reverse, and the Evil Powers of Hidden Confounders

18. What Should We Conclude? (Flaws, Limitations, and Implications)

19. The Slow, Careful Crawl Toward Truth

Conclusion: The Truth Is Out There (Now Go and Find It)

Notes

References

Index.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Other Format:

Print version: Kane, John Victor Truth Addict

ISBN:

9780520416604

OCLC:

1596196913