[[{“type”:“media”,“view_mode”:“media_large”,“fid”:null,“attributes”:{“class”:“media-image alignright size-full wp-image-1606”,“typeof”:“foaf:Image”,“style”:“”,“width”:“100”,“height”:“100”,“title”:“”,“alt”:“New York Times”}}]]Naked Statistics, a new book by Charles Wheelan ’88, a senior lecturer and policy fellow at the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center and a visiting professor in the Department of Economics, is a “happy amalgam” of textbook and essay about probability, risk, and your health, writes reviewer Abigail Zuger in The New York Times.

Wheelan’s book offers plenty of practical knowledge, some surprises—such as why seeing “the best surgeons in town” might not be the best plan—and offers some humor, too, Zuger writes.

“While a great measure of the book’s appeal comes from Mr. Wheelan’s fluent style— a natural comedian, he is truly the Dave Barry of the coin toss set—the rest comes from his multiple real world examples illustrating exactly why even the most reluctant mathophobe is well advised to achieve a personal understanding of the statistical underpinnings of life, whether that individual is watching football on the couch, picking a school for the children or jiggling anxiously in a hospital admitting office,” says Zuger.

Read the full story, published 1/28/13 in The New York Times.