Data are everywhere these days; the problem is making sense of them. That is the role of statistics, the university course that so many people skip or forget. Charles Wheelan, a professor at Dartmouth College, does something unique here: he makes statistics interesting and fun. His latest book strips the subject of its complexity to expose the attractive stuff underneath. Statistics is an important intellectual tool which allows the compression of a massive amount of information to a few meaningful numbers. It is the bedrock of modem society, from putting rockets into orbit to managing junk e-mail filters. People from all fields are finding that they need a familiarity with figures and statistics. But the problem is that the subject is typically taught by people who like statistics, rather than those who simply care about putting them to use. "Naked Statistics" is interesting because it focuses on the purpose of stats, not their inner elegance.