On July 2nd the American state of Georgia counted a total of 87,709 cases of covid-19. Fifteen days later the number had risen to 135,183. But the government’s online heat map hadn’t changed. How come?

As it turned out, the threshold for places to turn red had been lifted from 2,961 cases to 3,769. This is just one example of the types of misleading data that Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West have compiled in their new book, “Calling Bullshit”

Using clever anecdotes, nods to online culture and allusions to ancient philosophy, the book tells ordinary readers how to spot nonsense—even if they are not numerical whizzes.

Read the story to find out what it means for something to be “too good or too bad to be true” and how this applies to everyday data.