The Tyranny of Numbers: Mismeasurement and Misrule [Paperback]

Nicholas Eberstadt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1995

In this wide-ranging study, Nicholas Eberstadt demonstrates that some of the most basic of today's domestic and foreign policies have been buttressed or justified by what turns out to be misanalysis or misuse of available facts and figures. The Tyranny of Numbers not only warns about the ways the statistics are being misused in government policy in the United States and abroad but explains how this process can end up injuring vulnerable groups or distorting the workings of the democratic system.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Nicholas Eberstadt is the Harry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy at AEI.

Nicholas Eberstadt is the Harry Wendt Scholar in Political Economy at AEI.

Product Details

• Paperback: 275 pages
• Publisher: Aei Press (January 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 084473764X
• ISBN-13: 978-0844737645
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,017,429 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting points and thoughtfully chosen examples, June 28, 2009

By 

Lemas Mitchell "Libertarian/ Empiricist" (Hunan Changsha) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

There are other books that have highlighted statistical illusions and talked about how the numbers of things didn't add up ("Freakonomics" comes immediately to mind) but did a better job of keeping the reader interested. This book was at turns light and easy to read and at other times heavy and dense. But the end result was well worth the harder-to-read parts.)

This book was, overall, very good though. In the interest of keeping the review readable, I'll just offer 10 good points (there could have been many more that I noted):

1. This book was written several years ago, and it talks about things that have already come to pass. And in this way, one can test the predictions as one reads the book (people who have things to say about different economics issues are often 150% wrong in their predictions, and so the fact that this predicted so much that was right makes it a testament to the quality of the writing).

2. The author gives an excellent (brief) explanation of how the apartheid system in SA actually came to be-- it started out as racial preferences to "help someone that needed a helping hand" (Afrikaners), but morphed into something much worse. But the manifest function of the government was not the oppression of blacks. It just happened to work out that way through some number of steps.

3. A lot of people have commented on the restive Muslim population in Russia. But Eberstadt does a good job pinning down the demographic dynamics that made this so. In fact, it seems that this book was written before the worst parts of the Chechen crisis.

4. Particularly interesting was his treatment of poverty statistics (since EVERYONE seems to have an opinion about what is the appropriate government solution to poverty) that pointed out that who is poor depends on whether you measure income or consumption. (So, a person who cuts his own hair with a pair of $10 clippers consumes the exact same amount of services as a person who goes to the barbershop once every two weeks and pays a barber $15 each time to cut his hair-- independent of their income.)

5. Many of the things in this book foreshadow what was written in another great book: "Misadventures in the Tropics" by Bill Easterly. The Easterly book was a bit more readable, but Eberstadt's treatment set out the backbone by demonstrating what had ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

6. Hooray for throwing cold water on Cuba's revered health care system. I particularly liked the way that he went through and demonstrated that THE DATA FOR THIS JUST DON'T ADD UP. This is a good antidote to the filthy misrepresentations of that fat slob Michael Moore.

7. This book also foreshadowed a lot of research that was later done by other people on the sex imbalance in China. (Valerie Hudson, for example.) If anything, Eberstadt was too conservative in his estimates of the magnitude of the imbalance. It actually ended up that the imbalance was MUCH WORSE than even he anticipated.

8. This book has a heavy empirical bent (which it should, since it is meant to analyze how well figures correspond to reality), but the information is presented in such a way that there is no abstract speculation about what MIGHT be, but only about what IS and why it is. (This is a welcome relief from the books of apologists on different subjects--e.g., Cuban Healthcare.)

9. The book can also be read out of order. You can choose the topics that are the most interesting and read them first and the book seems to be in no way diminished.

10. The auhor demonstrated knowledge of a bit of Social Choice Theory as well (p. 87...."The purpose of the planning mechanism is to impose a single set of preferences--those determined by the party--over the activities of an economy that would otherwise respond to the preferences of individuals.")

Sadly, a book like this will not appeal to people who listen to those who make a living out of exposition of this or that crisis (e.g., Noam Chomsky) because the cost of working your way through such a book like this is higher than that of listening to the babbling of some fearmonger or another.

Well worth a secondhand purchase price.

2.0 out of 5 stars Out of date statistics, November 1, 2009

By 

Helen J. Bacon "Joan" (Nazareth, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Tyranny of Numbers: Mismeasurement and Misrule (Paperback)

Sure would have been nice if this book had been updated to current statistics. The concept of the book is very good, but the statistics are too old to be relevant. The book was published in 1995. For example, they were still referring to the USSR, East Germany, and West Germany in the statistics! Come on, time for a revision. If this book would have been up to date, it would have been a gold mine.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting points and thoughtfully chosen examples, June 28, 2009

By 

Lemas Mitchell "Libertarian/ Empiricist" (Hunan Changsha) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

There are other books that have highlighted statistical illusions and talked about how the numbers of things didn't add up ("Freakonomics" comes immediately to mind) but did a better job of keeping the reader interested. This book was at turns light and easy to read and at other times heavy and dense. But the end result was well worth the harder-to-read parts.)

This book was, overall, very good though. In the interest of keeping the review readable, I'll just offer 10 good points (there could have been many more that I noted):

1. This book was written several years ago, and it talks about things that have already come to pass. And in this way, one can test the predictions as one reads the book (people who have things to say about different economics issues are often 150% wrong in their predictions, and so the fact that this predicted so much that was right makes it a testament to the quality of the writing).

2. The author gives an excellent (brief) explanation of how the apartheid system in SA actually came to be-- it started out as racial preferences to "help someone that needed a helping hand" (Afrikaners), but morphed into something much worse. But the manifest function of the government was not the oppression of blacks. It just happened to work out that way through some number of steps.

3. A lot of people have commented on the restive Muslim population in Russia. But Eberstadt does a good job pinning down the demographic dynamics that made this so. In fact, it seems that this book was written before the worst parts of the Chechen crisis.

4. Particularly interesting was his treatment of poverty statistics (since EVERYONE seems to have an opinion about what is the appropriate government solution to poverty) that pointed out that who is poor depends on whether you measure income or consumption. (So, a person who cuts his own hair with a pair of $10 clippers consumes the exact same amount of services as a person who goes to the barbershop once every two weeks and pays a barber $15 each time to cut his hair-- independent of their income.)

5. Many of the things in this book foreshadow what was written in another great book: "Misadventures in the Tropics" by Bill Easterly. The Easterly book was a bit more readable, but Eberstadt's treatment set out the backbone by demonstrating what had ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

6. Hooray for throwing cold water on Cuba's revered health care system. I particularly liked the way that he went through and demonstrated that THE DATA FOR THIS JUST DON'T ADD UP. This is a good antidote to the filthy misrepresentations of that fat slob Michael Moore.

7. This book also foreshadowed a lot of research that was later done by other people on the sex imbalance in China. (Valerie Hudson, for example.) If anything, Eberstadt was too conservative in his estimates of the magnitude of the imbalance. It actually ended up that the imbalance was MUCH WORSE than even he anticipated.

8. This book has a heavy empirical bent (which it should, since it is meant to analyze how well figures correspond to reality), but the information is presented in such a way that there is no abstract speculation about what MIGHT be, but only about what IS and why it is. (This is a welcome relief from the books of apologists on different subjects--e.g., Cuban Healthcare.)

9. The book can also be read out of order. You can choose the topics that are the most interesting and read them first and the book seems to be in no way diminished.

10. The auhor demonstrated knowledge of a bit of Social Choice Theory as well (p. 87...."The purpose of the planning mechanism is to impose a single set of preferences--those determined by the party--over the activities of an economy that would otherwise respond to the preferences of individuals.")

Sadly, a book like this will not appeal to people who listen to those who make a living out of exposition of this or that crisis (e.g., Noam Chomsky) because the cost of working your way through such a book like this is higher than that of listening to the babbling of some fearmonger or another.

Well worth a secondhand purchase price.