Seven books that reveal the power of data

The world is awash with data. Ideally, its use improves decisions in business and other fields. But when clumsily or dishonestly wielded, numbers can cause disaster. So learning to use them wisely is an essential skill. 

Economist Education’s course, Data storytelling and visualisation: communicating with numbers to inform, persuade and decide, seeks to cultivate a “data mindset” among its participants. It does so through materials ranging from videos with The Economist’s data journalists to chart-making exercises—and to suggested reading for anyone who wishes to grasp the power of numbers. Below are edited excerpts from the book lists created by the course’s founders, Kenneth Cukier and Alex Selby-Boothroyd, both senior editors at The Economist. The first three volumes cover data storytelling, the next two data visualisation and the last two data ethics and usage.

• For an accessible primer on statistics and probability, read Charles Wheelan’s “Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data” (2013). Here, silly jokes meet statistics to engaging and educational effect. “‘Naked Statistics’ is a revealing look at statistics’ bare essentials,” as The Economist’s review puts it. 

• In “The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics” (2021), Tim Harford—a guru of good practice with data, columnist for the Financial Times and host of podcasts and BBC programmes—focuses his ire on how data misleads, to demonstrate how to do better.

• Discover ways to make data meaningful with “Dataclysm: What Our Online Lives Tell Us About Our Offline Selves” by Christian Rudder (2016). The co-founder and data wonk behind OkCupid, an online dating site, reveals insights from the firm’s troves of information, demonstrating how to tell stories with numbers.

• “History of Information Graphics” (2022), edited by Sandra Rendgen and Julius Wiedemann, takes readers on a brilliant romp through big moments in data visualisation’s development. With images beautifully reproduced by a respected arts publisher, this is the book that our course founders wish they had produced.

• No tome on representing data has a greater legacy than Edward Tufte’s “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” (1982). Parts of the bible of data visualisation may feel dated or obvious. But this merely reveals the discipline’s debt to Tufte: his ideas have become dogma. (See The Economist’s article on his legacy, “Worth a thousand words”.) 

• “Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think” (2013) by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier (one of our course founders) surveys how numbers can improve the world—provided they are used responsibly. The book is based on Cukier’s special report for The Economist, “Data, data everywhere”.

• “Privacy is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data” (2020) by Carissa Véliz, a philosopher at Oxford University, provides a useful guide to applying ethical considerations to data usage. It was one of The Economist’s books of the year in 2020.