Well, it’s that time of year again! The end, that is. With thoughts turning to festivities and family gatherings, we naturally look back on the times we’ve had. If that phrase makes you think of graduating high school, I apologize. At VPL, we’re looking back on all the millions of checkouts and check-ins of 2025. Unsurprisingly, many of the same authors remain popular, even the same titles. The lists in their entirety are at the end of this post, but all this talk of checkouts and predicting popularity has me thinking about statistics and what they can tell us about our world. I’ve always found data to be a powerful tool. We can apply statistical analysis to all kinds of subjects, gaining incredible insights on why things happen and whether they will happen again. Think of the brilliance of a movie like Moneyball about Oakland As coach Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) and the work of sabermetrician Bill James. It was James’ application of statistical analysis to the performance of a baseball team – first explained in his Baseball Abstract – that Beane used to take his As to twenty consecutive wins. (Long story short: it’s all about which players manage to get on base when they’re up to bat.) They were the first in the history of the American League to do so. It’s a truly wonderful movie, and not just for us analytical nerds. Michael Lewis’ non-fiction account of the underdog victory story helped director Bennett Miller adapt the events into film. Incidentally, Bill James is now a true crime author, even collaborating with his daughter to craft a meticulously researched account of a suspected serial killer from the turn of the twentieth century. So, with the power of statistics in my mind, I thought I would see what books we have in our catalogue about creative analysis of data. Not so much the straightforward, educational books about data analytics, but the ones with unique or even seemingly incredulous claims.