CCI is a community-based innovation ecosystem where residents, businesses, local governments, and academia tackle our region’s challenges. We support civic innovation that leads to a more equitable and sustainable community.

Fellowship Update

Networked Public Space Update

Though we haven’t had many updates to share recently, our UVA partners in the Networked Public Space (NPS) project have been hard at work! This project looks at how smart city technologies can be used in public spaces while involving residents from the beginning of the planning stages.The team has been developing open source low-cost and low-power environmental sensors. This month at UVA’s Datapalooza, they debuted the sensors publicly at a hands-on workshop.

During the sensor design process, other members of the team also worked with community organizations in Richmond to create a temporary installation in Shockoe. You can find out more about the Networked Public Space project here, and more about the work in Richmond, specifically, here.

Fellowship UpdateBook Review: How to Lie with Statistics, by Darrell Huff

Who would believe that Amazon’s current #1 Best Seller in Business Statistics is a slim volume, written in 1954 by Darrell Huff, who was not a statistician, but a prolific author who once was the managing editor of Better Homes and Gardens.

Huff wrote many books, such as How to Take a Chance, Score: The Strategy of Taking Tests, How to Figure the Odds on Everything, and The Complete How to Figure It: Using Math in Everyday Life. His expansive authorship also included books on home buying, home workshop projects, working with concrete and masonry, home improvement, and personal finances.

In How to Lie with Statistics, Huff exposes statistical “tricks” that can be used to deceive a reader. Why would Huff’s almost 70-year-old book on statistics remain a bestseller?

J. Michael Steele sums up the success of the book in his paper “Darrell Huff and Fifty Years of How to Lie with Statistics” (2005). He cites four key elements: the title, the illustrations – and illustrator, the style, and the content.

Read the rest of the review.