All kinds of things can go wrong with numbers. Prejudices may be hidden within measurement methods, samples might not be representative and connec­tions can be made that are not actually there. And it is exactly these problems that come into play in times of big data and arti­ficial intelligence. Now that the amount of data is so large and the algorithms so precise, we need to start becoming more aware of the finer details and more in­formed of the pitfalls.

Sometimes the figures are correct, but the context is missing. Threats can suddenly appear a lot more dramatic. For example, recent research has shown that if you eat processed meat, you have a twenty percent greater chance of develop­ing bowel cancer. Western media sources immediately jumped on this. Newspaper headlines declared ‘bacon just as carcino­genic as smoking’. But anyone reading the actual research papers will discover that the chances of getting cancer if you don’t eat unprocessed meat are five percent. And if you do eat it, that probability goes up to six percent: a lot less shocking, but in the meantime panic has struck.

Sanne Blauw takes the reader on a journey through history from Florence Nightingale – who was not just a lifesaving nurse but a nineteenth-century queen of infographics – to one of the great revolu­tions of our time: the rise of algorithms, which, of course, are not as neutral as we would like to believe. With The Biggest Bestseller of All Time (with This Title) Sanne Blauw hopes to put numbers back in their place. Not on a pedestal, not in the trash, but where they belong: alongside words.