Distrust

Gary Smith is the Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics at Pomona College. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University and was an Assistant Professor there for seven years. He has won two teaching awards and written (or co-authored) more than 100 academic papers and 15 books. He is the author of The AI Delusion (OUP 2018) and co-author with Jay Cordes of The 9 Pitfalls of Data Science (OUP 2019), which won the 2020 Prose Award for Excellence in Popular Science & Popular Mathematics by the Association of American Publishers.

• Introduction: Disinformation, Data Torturing, and Data Mining Part I - Disinformation 1: The Paranormal Is Normal 2: Flying Saucers and Space Tourists 3: Elite Conspiracies 4: A Post-Fact World Part II - Data Torturing 5: Squeezing Blood from Rocks 6: Most Medicines Disappoint 7: Provocative, but Wrong Part III - Data Mining 8: Looking for Needles in Haystacks 9: Beat the Market 10: Too Much Data Part IV - The Real Promise and Peril of AI 11: Overpromising and Underdelivering 12: Artificial Unintelligence Part V - The Crisis 13: Irreproducible Research 14: The Replication Crisis 15: Restoring the Luster of Science

Gary Smith has done it again. Distrust is a wild ride that derails the Big Data hype train with force, style, and above all sardonic humour. Smith is a master of illustrating by example-examples that are fresh, unexpected, at times shocking, and at times hilarious. Come along on Smith's tour of statistical snake-oil and you'll never look at AI or data science the same way again.