It’s been nearly fifteen years since Nicola Meyrick emailed me out of the blue to suggest that I might want to present a Radio 4 programme about statistics. Ever since then, I’ve been part of the More or Less family and it’s been both a pleasure and a privilege. This book reflects everything I’ve learned over the years, so Nicola deserves the credit for starting it all.
I’m grateful to everyone at the BBC who has worked researching, producing, reporting and mixing More or Less, doing everything in their power to make me sound good. My back-of-the-envelope estimate is that about a hundred people have been part of the team over the years, but in particular Richard Fenton-Smith and Lizzy McNeill worked on the stories about premature births and gun violence that illustrated Chapter Three. I am especially lucky to have worked with my long-suffering editor, Richard Vadon, and a series of superb producers, notably Ruth Alexander, Innes Bowen, Richard Knight, Kate Lamble and Charlotte McDonald. Andrew Dilnot, who co-created More or Less with Michael Blastland, was extremely generous when I asked for his advice. He has been so ever since.
Under Hetan Shah’s leadership, everyone at the Royal Statistical Society made me feel every inch an honorary statistician. I’m grateful to them all. Two statistical gurus in particular have been so helpful to me in pondering this book: Denise Lievesley and David Spiegelhalter.
David Bodanis, Paul Klemperer and Bill Leigh all made invaluable comments after reading the entire manuscript – truly a selfless act – and Bruno Giussani caught an important error in an early draft. At Pushkin Industries, Julia Barton, Ryan Dilley, Mia Lobel and Jacob Weisberg have been a pleasure to work with – as well as supplying comments on a podcast script that helped make Chapter Ten a lot better. Andrew Wright’s detailed and insightful editing improved the book a great deal, as it has done many times before; he’s a star and a true friend.
Thanks to every scholar and writer whose work I have relied on either through interviews, emails or by consulting their writing, in particular: Anjana Ahuja, Michael Blastland, Alberto Cairo, Andy Cotgreave, Kate Crawford, Kenn Cukier, Andrew Dilnot, Anne Emberton, Baruch Fischhoff, Walter Friedman, Hannah Fry, Kaiser Fung, Dan Gardner, Andrew Gelman, Ben Goldacre, Rebecca Goldin, David Hand, Dan Kahan, Daniel Kahneman, Eileen Magnello, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Lynn McDonald, David McRaney, Barbara Mellers, Errol Morris, Will Moy, Terry Murray, Sylvia Nasar, Cathy O’Neil, Onora O’Neill, Caroline Criado Perez, Robert Proctor, Jason Reifler, Alex Reinhart, Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Max Roser, Hans Rosling, Benjamin Scheibehenne, Janelle Shane, Hugh Small, Lucy Smith, Philip Tetlock, Edward Tufte, Patrick Wolfe, David Wootton, Frank Wynne, Ed Yong and Jason Zweig.
At Little, Brown, Tim Whiting and Nithya Rae have been models of patience as I embarked on an extended coronavirus rewrite. Dan Balado and Holly Harley made invaluable edits, as did my editor at Riverhead Books in the US, Jake Morrissey. Thanks of course to the implacably excellent Sally Holloway, to Zoe Pagnamenta, and everyone at Felicity Bryan Associates.
I continue to value the support and indulgence of my editors at the Financial Times, in particular Alice Fishburn, Brooke Masters and Alec Russell. Loyal FT readers will see that some of the ideas in this book were first explored in my writing for the newspaper. I love the FT and am so glad to be part of it.
Thank you to my children, Stella, Africa and Herbie, just for being you. And to Fran Monks; I’m not even going to try to count the ways I am grateful – they would fill another book.