In a year of uncertainty, numbers have even come to serve as a source of comfort. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated just how vulnerable the world can be when you don’t have good statistics, and the Presidential election filled our newspapers with polls and projections, all meant to slake our thirst for insight. That’s the subject of two new books about data and statistics: “ Counting: How We Use Numbers to Decide What Matters” (Liveright), by Deborah Stone, which warns of the risks of relying too heavily on numbers, and “ The Data Detective” (Riverhead), by Tim Harford, which shows ways of avoiding the pitfalls of a world driven by data.īoth books come at a time when the phenomenal power of data has never been more evident. Whenever you try to force the real world to do something that can be counted, unintended consequences abound. Before the incentives had been established, doctors couldn’t give appointments soon enough afterward, they wouldn’t give appointments late enough.īlair and his advisers are far from the first people to fall afoul of their own well-intentioned targets. If Church wanted her son to see the doctor in a week, she would have to wait until the day before, then call at 8 A.M. Otherwise, physicians would lose out on bonuses. Live on national television, Diana Church calmly explained to the Prime Minister that her son’s doctor had asked to see him in a week’s time, and yet the clinic had refused to take any appointments more than forty-eight hours in advance. But audience members knew of a problem that Blair and his government did not. Blair’s government, bustling with bright technocrats, decided to address this issue by setting a target: doctors would be given a financial incentive to see patients within forty-eight hours. At the time, it was notoriously difficult to get a doctor’s appointment within a reasonable period ailing people were often told they’d have to wait weeks for the next available opening. is a much loved, much mocked, and much neglected British institution, with all kinds of quirks and inefficiencies. Blair, eight years into his tenure as Britain’s Prime Minister, had been on a mission to improve the National Health Service. But an encounter with a woman in the audience of a London television studio in April, 2005, left him visibly flustered. Tony Blair was usually relaxed and charismatic in front of a crowd.
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