THE WAIT IS OVER, UPDATED 'NEWS AND NUMBERS' AVAILABLE

The first edition of News & Numbers, written by Victor Cohn in 1989, served as a bible for a generation of science writers on how to interpret and report statistics. When Cohn, a retired science writer for the Washington Post, was diagnosed with lung cancer at age 79, he wanted to make sure his legacy was updated and asked his good friend Lew Cope, former science reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, to help him rewrite it. "He wanted the book to be done by a journalist," said Cope, "because, he said, if it's not done by a journalist it won't be for journalists." Cohn died last year, but not before he saw to it that the revised News & Numbers incorporated his ideas for updating the book for today's reporting challenges. The book contains new chapters on how to interpret the numbers used in news polls; on numbers in reporting education, crime, entertainment, and transportation stories; and includes the use of the Internet. To make it easier for reporters to use the book as a reference work, and for journalism professors to assign relevant sections to their students, each chapter is subdivided into sections. Cope wrote in a tribute, "Victor was a master of his craft. As part of this, he showed journalists the importance of probing numbers to discover what they tell us about virtually every aspect of our lives. With this new edition, Victor's messages will live on." News and Numbers: A Guide to Reporting Statistical Claims and Controversies in Health and Other Fields (second edition) is published by Iowa State University Press/Ames.

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