How to Lie with Statistics
Darrell Huff was an American writer best known as the author of the best-selling statistics book of the second half of the twentieth century, How to Lie with Statistics (1954).
In How to Lie with Statistics, Darrell Huff states, "There is terror in numbers". And nowhere is this anxiety more manifested as mindless acceptance of authority than in the perilous realm of averages, correlations, graphs, and trends. With this slim volume, first published in 1954, Huff hoped to break through "the daze that follows the collision of statistics with the human mind". How to Lie with Statistics is still pertinent as a wake-up call for people who aren't used to scrutinizing the never-ending flow of figures coming from Wall Street, Madison Avenue, and anywhere else someone has an axe to grind, a point to make, or a product to sell. "The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify," warns Huff.
Although many of the instances in the book are delightfully old, the warnings are timeless. Statistics are filled with potential for misapplication, from "gee-whiz graphs" that give nonexistent drama to trends, to "results" divorced from their technique and meaning, to statistics' ultimate stumbling block—faulty cause-and-effect thinking. Huff's tone is tolerant and amusing, but firm. He expects you to learn something helpful from the book and start applying it every day, much like a stern father. He begs himself not to be a sucker again!
Even if you can't discover a source of demonstrable bias, be skeptical of the results as long as there is a possibility of bias someplace. There is always something.
Read How to Lie with Statistics for more information. You'll remember its straightforward principles whether you meet statistics at work, school, or in advertising. Huff begs us not to be terrified by numbers. "The fact is that, despite its mathematical base, statistics is as much an art as it is a science."---Therese Littleton
Author: Darrell Huff
Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0393310728/
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Best Sellers Rank: #7,323 in Books
#2 in Business Statistics
#7 in Statistics (Books)
#8 in Probability & Statistics (Books)
