There’s more to statistics. So much more than just numbers.    

“Statistics are everywhere from Netflix determining what movie you want to watch to retailers coming up with borderline scary methods for figuring our what your shopping habit are going to be, “says Charles Wheelan, author of “Naked Statistics.”

Statistics is the simple and helpful analysis of all the raw data out there — whether it’s about a baseball player’s at-bat performance, or sales figures at The Gap. But the figure should be digested with some skepticism, Wheelan says, because data can be interpreted a lot of different ways.

“Statistics are like online dating,” he says. “You can say things in your profile that are true, but by acts of omission or different emphasis you might leave out or stress some things that present a picture of you that is not wholly accurate.”