Leading statistician Sir David Spiegelhalter guides us through the perplexing world of statistics and advises us how to avoid tripping up.

Ask the average school pupil their opinion of statistics and they'd probably reply: 'boring.' But statistics can be fascinating, entertaining, and astonishingly counter-intuitive.

Fundamentally, statistics is the discipline of studying our world through data. Given that data is now everywhere and is central to most scientific research, understanding statistics is key to better understanding the modern world.

Sir David Spiegelhalter is a statistician and professor at the University of Cambridge and was President of the Royal Statistical Society from 2017 to 2018.

In The Art of Statistics, Spiegelhalter uses a practical approach to introduce beginners to his subject, focusing on how statistics help us address pressing real-world problems.

The book also explores the difficulty of communicating science to the public, and how statistics are used and misused in science.