Daily Commute: Facing my fears

Book Review: The Tiger that Isn’t: seeing through a world of Numbers (Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot).

Another day, another book. I have just noticed that orange definitely seems to be the theme so far this week (must try making one of those rainbow bookshelves which I am ever so jealous of).

The book itself is a GREAT read. Described as a “popular mathematics” book and more specifically a statistics book I was initially put off. Despite having studied Additional maths at school, like most law students, maths has never been my forte (and I’m terribly out of practice for that matter). However, this book actually makes numbers less scary. It makes sense and provides you with interesting facts, putting a new spin on what you read in the papers.

To give you an idea of the topics discussed, I will give you an example:

In 1997 the labour government said that it would spend an extra £300m over five years to create a million new childcare places….

So is £300m to provide a million places a big number? Share it out and it equals £300 per place. Divide it by five to find its worth in any one year (remember it was spread over 5 years), and you are left with £60 per year. Spread that across 52 weeks of the year and it leaves £1.15 a week. Could you find childcare for £1.15 a week? In parts of rural china, maybe.

The book hits a number of topical issues, from knife crime, the impact speed cameras, the discovery of new genes, taxes and cancer. The results are surprising, and never once is the book boring (and I usually find numbers boring) it is entertaining, well written and intriguing. Very readable. Makes me wish someone would put the swine flu figures into context.

On a side note, the authors do a programme on Radio 4, More or Less. Shall have to have a dig around that later.