A delightful takedown of our unreasonable worship of numbers. . . . In 1954, Darrell Huff’s bestselling How to Lie With Statistics began a genre that continues to produce numerous books each year. Stone . . . casts an equally critical eye but delves far more deeply into the subject. . . . As Stone lays out her examples of irrational faith in numbers, readers will squirm, but not with disbelief. . . . Enthralling evidence that there is less to numbers than meets the eye. —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

[An] incisive treatise. . . . Stone distills a wealth of thinking about statistics and their psychological and social foundations into lucid, engaging prose, illustrated with piquant graphics and cartoons . . . [This] is a stimulating layperson’s guide to the pseudo-mathematical rationalizations behind so much of what governments do.—Publishers Weekly

In this splendid book, Deborah Stone reveals that what we count depends on what we consider important, which in turn reflects how we make meaning out of a world of infinite facts and possibilities. Required reading for anyone who’s interested in the truth.—Robert B. Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley

Deborah Stone’s inspired book could not be better timed. Endless arguments about how to construct and understand COVID-19 statistics prove her point—ostensibly objective numbers are never neutral. Stone brings to this endeavor her signature brilliance at demystifying daunting topics.—Robert Kuttner, coeditor of American Prospect

Deborah Stone makes clear in her delightful new book that counting, that most basic mathematical activity, is anything but basic or mathematical when the topic is the social world. . . . The book is both enlightening and a joy to read.—John Allen Paulos, author of Innumeracy and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

Anyone who believes that 2 × 30 is equal to 3 × 20 is in for a delightful surprise.—Charles Wheelan, author of Naked Statistics

How does Deborah Stone keep doing this? She has an unerring ability to see our culture in an entirely new light and transform the way we think. Every page sparkles with insight and delight.—Colonel Wallace Earl Walker, PhD, U.S. Army, retired, founding dean of the Citadel School of Business Administration

This book is hard to put down. With a sharp wit and vivid examples from real life, Stone shows that numbers are never as straightforward as we’re taught in school. Whether they inform or mislead depends a lot on who is using them and why.—Marcia Angell, MD, former editor-in-chief, New England Journal of Medicine

An indispensable triumph.—Virginia Eubanks, author of Automating Inequality

Deborah Stone’s book, reckoning with the mechanisms and myths of numbers—but also with their morality and politics—adds up to a profound meditation on this essential yet so rarely considered marker of the human. . . . An enlightenment and a call for justice.—James Carroll, author of The Cloister