Audiobooks by Gary Smith

Distrust: Big Data, Data-Torturing, and the Assault on Science

There is no doubt science is currently suffering from a credibility crisis. This thought-provoking book argues that, ironically, science’s credibility is being undermined by tools created by scientists themselves. Scientific disinformation and damaging conspiracy theories are rife because of the Internet that science created, the scientific demand for empirical evidence and statistical significance leads to data torturing and confirmation bias, and data mining is fuelled by the technological advances in Big Data and the development of ever-increasingly powerful computers. With accessible examples ranging from COVID disinformation to bitcoin and conspiracy theories, this fascinating book examines the impacts of society’s growing distrust of science, and ultimately, through constructive suggestions, paves the way forward for restoring the credibility of the scientific community.

Gary Smith (Author), Graham Winton (Narrator)

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The AI Delusion

We live in an incredible period in history. The Computer Revolution may be even more life-changing than the Industrial Revolution. We can do things with computers that could never be done before, and computers can do things for us that could never be done before. But our love of computers should not cloud our thinking about their limitations. We are told that computers are smarter than humans and that data mining can identify previously unknown truths, or make discoveries that will revolutionize our lives. Our lives may well be changed, but not necessarily for the better. Computers are very good at discovering patterns, but are useless in judging whether the unearthed patterns are sensible because computers do not think the way humans think. We fear that super-intelligent machines will decide to protect themselves by enslaving or eliminating humans. But the real danger is not that computers are smarter than us, but that we think computers are smarter than us and, so, trust computers to make important decisions for us. The AI Delusion explains why we should not be intimidated into thinking that computers are infallible, that data-mining is knowledge discovery, and that black boxes should be trusted.

Gary Smith (Author), Eric Michael Summerer (Narrator)

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Money Machine: The Surprisingly Simple Power of Value Investing

In Money Machine, Gary Smith shows you how billionaire investors like Warren Buffett make their fortune and achieve 8% returns each year using value investing. Money Machine is filled with expert advice on how to: Identify the "intrinsic value" of a company Decide which stocks to pick and which to avoid Time the market for the greatest gains Beat the market every single year And more . . . There's no reason your money should be sitting in a bank account. By learning value investing, you can reap the rewards of consistent, reliable gains that can make you a millionaire by the time you retire. Don't just work for you money-put your money to work for you and retire in style.

Gary Smith (Author), Stephen R. Thorne (Narrator)

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What the Luck? : The Surprising Role of Chance in Our Everyday Lives

The newest book by the acclaimed author of Standard Deviations takes on luck, and all the mischief the idea of luck can cause in our lives. In Israel, pilot trainees who were praised for doing well subsequently performed worse, while trainees who were yelled at for doing poorly performed better. It is an empirical fact that highly intelligent women tend to marry men who are less intelligent. Students who get the highest scores in third grade generally get lower scores in fourth grade. And yet, it's wrong to conclude that screaming is not more effective in pilot training, women choose men whose intelligence does not intimidate them, or schools are failing third graders. In fact, there's one reason for each of these empirical facts: Statistics. Specifically, a statical concept called Regression to the Mean. Regression to the mean seeks to explain, with statistics, the role of luck in our day to day lives. An insufficient appreciation of luck and chance can wreak all kinds of mischief in sports, education, medicine, business, politics, and more. It can lead us to see illness when we are not sick and to see cures when treatments are worthless. Perfectly natural random variation can lead us to attach meaning to the meaningless. Freakonomics showed how economic calculations can explain seemingly counterintuitive decision-making. Thinking, Fast and Slow, helped readers identify a host of small cognitive errors that can lead to miscalculations and irrational thought. In What the Luck?, statistician and author Gary Smith sets himself a similar goal, and explains in clear, understandable, and witty prose, how a statistical understanding of luck can change the way we see just about every aspect of our lives...and can help us learn to rely less on random chance, and more on truth.

Gary Smith (Author), Tim Andres Pabon (Narrator)

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Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways to Lie with Statistics

"A very entertaining book about a very serious problem. We deceive ourselves all the time with statistics, and it is time we wised up." -Robert J. Shiller, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics Did you know that baseball players whose names begin with the letter "D" are more likely to die young? Or that Asian Americans are most susceptible to heart attacks on the fourth day of the month? Or that drinking a full pot of coffee every morning will add years to your life, but one cup a day increases the risk of pancreatic cancer? All of these "facts" have been argued with a straight face by credentialed researchers and backed up with reams of data and convincing statistics. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Ronald Coase once cynically observed, "If you torture data long enough, it will confess." Lying with statistics is a time-honored con. In Standard Deviations, economics professor Gary Smith walks us through the various tricks and traps that people use to back up their own crackpot theories. Sometimes, the unscrupulous deliberately try to mislead us. Other times, the well-intentioned are blissfully unaware of the mischief they are committing. Today, data is so plentiful that researchers spend precious little time distinguishing between good, meaningful indicators and total rubbish. Not only do others use data to fool us, we fool ourselves. With the breakout success of Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise, the once humdrum subject of statistics has never been hotter. Drawing on breakthrough research in behavioral economics by luminaries like Daniel Kahneman and Dan Ariely and taking to task some of the conclusions of Freakonomics author Steven D. Levitt, Standard Deviations demystifies the science behind statistics and makes it easy to spot the fraud all around.

Gary Smith (Author), Tim Andres Pabon (Narrator)

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Death in the Jungle: Diary of a Navy Seal

With 257 combat missions in Vietnam under his belt, Gary Smith is a living witness to the realities of Naval Special Warfare. He worked with some of the toughest and most highly motivated men in the world, executing missions in the murderous terrain of the Rung Sat Special Zone and Dung Island. The key to their success: go where no ordinary soldier would go and no VC would expect them. Through death reigned as king in the jungles as king in the jungles of Vietnam, Gary Smith considered it a privelege and an honor to serve under the officers and with the men of Underwater Demolition Team 12 and SEAL Team 1. Because he and his teammates, trained to the max, gave each other the courage at attain the unattainable…

Alan Maki, Gary R. Smith, Gary Smith (Author), Eric Conger (Narrator)

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