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The Chicago Guide to Writing about Numbers (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)

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Author: Jane E. Miller
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$17.00~~
Buy Used: $10.90
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Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 312
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.7

ISBN: 0226526313
Dewey Decimal Number: 808.0665
EAN: 9780226526317
ASIN: 0226526313

Publication Date: November 3, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
DIVPeople who work well with numbers are often stymied by how to write about them. Those who don't often work with numbers have an even tougher time trying to put them into words. For instance, scientists and policy analysts learn to calculate and interpret numbers, but not how to explain them to a general audience. Students learn about gathering data and using statistical techniques, but not how to write about their results. And readers struggling to make sense of numerical information are often left confused by poor explanations. Many books elucidate the art of writing, but books on writing about numbers are nonexistent.BRBRUntil now. Here, Jane Miller, an experienced research methods and statistics teacher, gives writers the assistance they need. iThe Chicago Guide to Writing about Numbers/i helps bridge the gap between good quantitative analysis and good expository writing. Field-tested with students and professionals alike, this book shows writers how to think about numbers during the writing process.BRBRMiller begins with twelve principles that lay the foundation for good writing about numbers. Conveyed with real-world examples, these principles help writers assess and evaluate the best strategy for representing numbers. She next discusses the fundamental tools for presenting numbers#8212;tables, charts, examples, and analogies#8212;and shows how to use these tools within the framework of the twelve principles to organize and write a complete paper.BRBRBy providing basic guidelines for successfully using numbers in prose, iThe Chicago Guide to Writing about Numbers/i will help writers of all kinds clearly and effectively tell a story with numbers as evidence. Readers and writers everywhere will be grateful for this much-needed mentor./DIV

Customer Reviews:

4 out of 5 stars

The Chicago Guide to Writing October 3, 2005
6 out of 8 found this review helpful

This is a required text for a graduate course I have enrolled in for fall term. So far, I have found the book makes understanding numbers easier for those (like me) who did not partake in any major mathematical studies prior to a statistics based course.

3 out of 5 stars

dry numbers September 24, 2005
1 out of 9 found this review helpful

of course useful and informative, but just a little too dry, heavy and complicated for non-experts.

4 out of 5 stars

Competent guide for the quantitative writer. June 25, 2005
14 out of 14 found this review helpful

This is a non-nonsense, practical guide to writing with numbers - something that lots of people do without even realizing it, and often do badly. br /br /This book is aimed at a variety of different audiences. It will help anyone writing at the level of a newspaper story. Miller suggests a variety of ways to avoid basic blunders and gaffes. Avoiding errors isn't enough, though, so Miller suggests a variety of ways to bring the meaning and importance of the values to life for a reader - and that's what the exercise was really about. One of her strongest techniques is "GEE", for Generalizations, Examples, and Exceptions. She presents a number of cases that show the general rule expressed by the numbers, specific and representative cases, then the "truth in advertising," the gotchas and caveats that refine any broad-brush generality. Come to think of it, that's not a bad technique for other kinds of descriptive writing, either.br /br /Miller extends GEE and her other suggestions to the most rigorous kinds of scientific writing, as well. If anything, bad writing about numbers may be even easier when numbers are so much more critical and have such subtle relationships. It's a bit annoying that Miller refers repeatedly to her other, as yet unwritten book for more advanced statistical topics; I keep getting the feeling that I'm reading only half of something.br /br /That leads me to a few other weaknesses I found in this book. The sections on charts, tables, and presentations are competent enough, but could have been a lot stronger. The charting section is especially weak, and should be supplemented by another text about charting specifically. If this is meant as a reference, to be grabbed when a writer hits a snag, it could have been organized a bit more tightly, in more of handbook style. Still there are a few good tables describing common kinds of numbers (fractions, percentages, ratios, absolute differences, etc) and how to handle them, good for a writer's quick fix.br /br /The one real weakness comes from one of the book's strengths. Miller really does address number users of many levels of sophistication. She does realize that some people need to make sense of milage comparisons and slanted percentages in the news and in ads, but others deal in z-scores, p-values, and wilder exotica. The problem is that the numerical novice and sophisticate are usually addressed in the same sentence, or at least paragraph. This may be a turn-off for people struggling with the basics, i.e. the people most in need of advice.br /br /This is a valued addition to the reference shelf of anyone who presents quantitive information. That's just about every writer, sooner or later. It may help technical illustrators, too, because image and word serve many of the same purposes in presenting information. This should not be your only guide to presenting numbers, but it should be among your tools.br /br ///wiredweird

4 out of 5 stars

A nice set of ideas and recommendations May 27, 2005
11 out of 11 found this review helpful

This book is a short primer on statistical literacy combined with a style guide on discussing numbers in prose, and through charts and tables. The focus is on numbers that represent data obtained from polls or experiments. The style guide portions are quite basic, are best suited for students, and do not present many different options for presenting data. The parts on statistical literacy, particularly those on presenting data in an intellectually honest manner, are worth reading and rereading for most anyone.br /br /Overall, this guide is a decent addition to the reference collection of anyone who writes about data.

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