How to Lie with Statistics: Difference between revisions

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'''''How to Lie with Statistics''''' is a book written by [[Darrell Huff]] in 1954, presenting an introduction to [[statistics]] for the [[general reader]]. Not a statistician, Huff was a journalist who wrote many "how -to" articles as a freelancer.

The book is a brief, breezy illustrated volume outlining the [[misuse of statistics]] and errors in the interpretation of statistics, and how these errors may create incorrect conclusions.

In the 1960s and 1970s, it became a standard textbook introduction to the subject of statistics for many college students. It has become one of the best-selling statistics books in history, with over one and a half million copies sold in the English-language edition.<ref name="fiftyyears">"Over{{Cite thejournal|title=Darrell lastHuff fiftyand years,Fifty Years of ''How to Lie with Statistics''|author-first has=J. soldMichael more|author-last copies=Steele than| any other statistical text."author-link =J. M.Michael Steele. "[http://www-stat|journal=Statistical Science |doi=10.wharton.upenn.edu1214/~steele/Publications/PDF/TN148.pdf088342305000000205 Darrell|publisher Huff and Fifty Years=[[Institute of ''How to Lie withMathematical Statistics'']] {{Webarchive|urldoi-access=https://web.archive.org/web/20210223123134/http://www-stat.wharton.upenn.edu/~steele/Publications/PDF/TN148.pdf free|datevolume=2021-02-23 }}. ''Statistical Science'', 20 (|issue=3), |date=2005, |pages=205–209.}}</ref> It has also been widely translated.

Themes of the book include "[[Correlation does not imply causation]]" and "Using [[random sampling]]"." It also shows how statistical graphs can be used to distort reality,. forFor example, by truncating the bottom of a line or bar chart, so that differences seem larger than they are,. orOr, by representing one-dimensional quantities on a pictogram by two- or three-dimensional objects to compare their sizes, so that the reader forgets that the images do not scale the same way the quantities do.

The original edition contained illustrations by artist [[Irving Geis]]. In a UK edition, theseGeis' illustrations were replaced withby cartoons by [[Mel Calman]].

==See also==

* ''[[How to Lie with Maps]]''

*[[Lies, damned lies, and statistics]]

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[[Category:1954 non-fiction books]]

[[Category:Statistics books]]

[[Category:Mathematics books]]

[[Category:Misuse of statistics]]