How to Lie With Statistics

Although many of the examples used in the book are charmingly dated, the cautions are timeless. Statistics are rife with opportunities for misuse, from "gee-whiz graphs" that add nonexistent drama to trends, to "results" detached from their method and meaning, to statistics' ultimate bugaboo--faulty cause-and-effect reasoning. Huff's tone is tolerant and amused, but no-nonsense. Like a lecturing father, he expects you to learn something useful from the book, and start applying it every day. Never be a sucker again, he cries!

Even if you can't find a source of demonstrable bias, allow yourself some degree of skepticism about the results as long as there is a possibility of bias somewhere. There always is.

Read How to Lie with Statistics. Whether you encounter statistics at work, at school, or in advertising, you'll remember its simple lessons. Don't be terrorized by numbers, Huff implores. "The fact is that, despite its mathematical base, statistics is as much an art as it is a science." --Therese Littleton

How often do you hear statistics bandied about in the media or used to try to prove some special-interest point? "Of course" the people quoting the figures must be right with numbers on their sides... until you look at just how those numbers were arrived at.

This book isn't truly a guide on how to lie with statistics, but it is an excellent text that informs the reader both how others will lie to them using statistics and on how to interpret the validity of purported statistical data.


Great intro   January 12, 2005
wiredweird (Earth, or somewhere nearby)
23 out of 23 found this review helpful

-- with no equations. This book really is for every one. In fact, if you're a no-equations reader, this book will be especially helpful.

It shows all the little tricks that advertisers and propagandists, government agencies included, throw at you every day. One, p.85, is an impressive sounding news article about teachers' pay. At first, it looks as if a generous government outlay had doubled or tripled teachers' salaries. Looking closer, however, one sees an odd cluster of unrelated numbers flying in close formation. None of the numbers quoted has any bearing on any other, at least none that the article's reader can discover.

Duff also points out the fallacy of correlation. Oh, it's a useful enough measure, if (!) a number of mathematical requirements are met. It is not causation, however. For example, there is a strong correlation between a school child's height and the child's score on a given spelling test - taller kids do better. The fact is a lot less surprising when you see that first graders tend to be smaller than sixth graders, and tend to know fewer words. Maybe the example sounds silly, but no sillier than lots of the numbers in the news every day.

This is a quick and approachable read, and true even if the examples are now dated. Despite its name, this book really is aimed at honest people, readers who want real understanding of the data thrown at them, and presenters who want their numbers to be understood properly. And best, you don't have to be a mathematician to see what's going on.

//wiredweird


Classic Text   July 7, 2005
David Bock (Hamilton, VA USA)
14 out of 15 found this review helpful

This book was recommended to me, tangentially, on the subject of 'software engineering project management metrics'. Part of the point of the recommendation was to understand how seemingly irrefutable metrics can be used to persuade, mislead, and worse - support forgone conclusions.

This books teaches that well... "Numbers, when tortured, will confess to anything". It teaches how numbers can misrepresent, how to spot when that is occuring, and how to garner the real information the numbers might be telling you.

I read this book in 2 evenings - maybe 90 minutes each evening. For about the attention span of a few TV shows, I have gained some knowledge that will give me a new perspective in many important situations.

If I were to pick this book up in a bookstore, a quick glance would have made it seem... outdated. the graphics, the language, and some of the facts anf figures are from the 1930's-1950's... but if you get past that, it is more relevant than ever, because we all encounter abuse of statistics every day. (I heard a radio ad the other day that said people in a certain career make 'up to $60,000 or more a year on average'... What does that MEAN? Up to OR MORE? You could stick ANY number between those two statements and have it be true. On AVERAGE? Isn't an average a hard and fast calculated value? Doesn't EVERY career have an 'average salary' of 'up to $60,000 or more'? Heck... doesnt' every career have an 'average salary' of 'up to $1,000,000 or more'? Just another example of tortured numbers...)


original book that gave statistics a bad name   April 19, 2001
Michael R. Chernick (Malvern, PA)
13 out of 13 found this review helpful

Along with that saying "Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics" this book lets the public know that there are methods out there that distort and can mislead. As a statistician who knows that the proper use of statistical methods is valuable and uncovers truth or quantifies uncertainty I get a bit worried about the continued association of statistics with lies. However, this book by Huff is entertaining and is a classic. If you read it carefully you will see that it is not statistical methods that create the lie but rather unscrupulous people who misuse the methods and take advantage of the public's ignorance of statistical ideas. The message of the book is to learn statistics so that you won't be deceived!


how to catch errors in statistics both the malicious and innocent kind   February 5, 2007
Patrick Regan (Northampton, MA USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful

How to lie with Statistics covers all the uses of statistics through a hit list of it's abuses. By covering how to lie with statistics the author teaches both awareness of misleading statistics and also the basics of this branch of mathematics. It is amazing how subtle a misleading statistic can be. For example there are many types of averages, the mean median and mode. In some cases they produce different results so a statistics compiler can choose the one favorable to him or her. I hoped to get a birds eye view of statistics from this book so as to improve my awareness of the constant abuse of statistics that occurs in the media. I believe I got that and more out of this book.