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  • Published: 23 March 2009
  • ISBN: 9780141912653
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304

Panic-Ology

What's There To Be Afraid Of?



What exactly are your chances of being struck by a meteorite?

Think you're having less sex than the French?

How high will sea levels actually rise?

We live in an increasingly uncertain world. There's so much to worry about it is often hard to know what to really panic about. But stay calm! For Panicology is the perfect answer to the conundrums and questions that bedevil modern life. Putting a lit match to the lies, headlines and statistical twaddle that seeks to frighten us, it explores 40 reasons for worry: from binge-drinking to Frankenstein foods, bird flu to alien abductions - and explores what, if any, effect they will have on your life.

Why worry in ignorance when you can be a happy, informed sceptic?
%%%What exactly are your chances of being struck by a meteorite?
Think you're having less sex than the French?
How high will sea levels actually rise?
We live in an increasingly uncertain world. There's so much to worry about it is often hard to know what to really panic about. But stay calm! For Panicology is the perfect answer to the conundrums and questions that bedevil modern life. Putting a lit match to the lies, headlines and statistical twaddle that seeks to frighten us, it explores 40 reasons for worry: from binge-drinking to Frankenstein foods, bird flu to alien abductions - and explores what, if any, effect they will have on your life.
Why worry in ignorance when you can be a happy, informed sceptic?

  • Published: 23 March 2009
  • ISBN: 9780141912653
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304

About the authors

Simon Briscoe

Simon Briscoe has been Statistics Editor at The Financial Times since 1999.
In the 1980s he worked in the Central Statistical Office, the Treasury and the EU in Brussels, followed by 12 years in the research departments of three investment banks - finally as Managing Director of Research, at Nikko Europe, achieving top rankings in Institutional Investor and Extel surveys.
He was author of Interpreting the Economy, published in 2000 by Penguin, and Britain in Numbers, a statistical review of the UK and how figures are used in politics, published by Politico's in 2005, and Harriman's Financial Dictionary, 2007.
He has been on the Councils of the Royal Statistical Society and the Society of Business Economists and has chaired the Financial Statistics Users' Group and the Official Statistics Section of the RSS. He was a member of the ONS Statistics Advisory Committee and has been an adviser for the Treasury Committee (of the House of Commons). His latest book, written with Hugh Aldersey-Williams, is Panicology (2008).
He lives in north London with his wife and two children.