In a review, John Allen Paulos, professor of mathematics at Temple, explains that the title of Charles Seife's new book, Proofiness, is a takeoff on Stephen Colbert's notion of "truthiness," the property of statements that have the ring of truth to them but upon a little reflection are seen to be bogus. Likewise, proofiness refers to numbers and statistical arguments that seem convincing but are really somewhere between unwarranted and ludicrous. "Seife begins by pointing out that numbers in the news do not inhabit some ideal Platonic realm but result from very fallible measurements that are often based on vague definitions or faulty assumptions," wrote Paulos.