Numbers don't lie

Author: Vaclav Smil

While numbers don’t lie they also don’t tell good stories. Vaclav Smil probably knows this better than anyone else, so he make sure that each story is really short. Vaclav takes many of the standard  econometrics like GDP, happiness index, etc. and looks for contrasting numbers like suicide rate to see if these well-known quantities measure up to what they purport to be.

Vaclav has spent a lot of time studying innovation and its impact on humans and is clearly unimpressed with the recent fascination for social media. He is quick to point out that the 1880s witnessed some major advances in technology like antiperspirants, electric lights, elevators, etc. Not all the 71 stories are interesting, but I found several that grabbed my interest.