How to Lie with Statistics: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 00:57, 15 November 2022

Revision as of 22:54, 16 March 2023

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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">{{Cite journal|title=Darrell Huff and Fifty Years of ''How to Lie with Statistics''|author-first =J. Michael |author-last =Steele | author-link =J. Michael Steele |journal=Statistical Science |doi=10.1214/088342305000000205 |publisher =[[Institute of Mathematical Statistics]] |doi-access=free|volume=20|issue=3|date=2005|pages=205–209}}</ref> It has also been widely translated.

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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, for example by truncating the bottom of a line or bar chart, so that differences seem larger than they are, or 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==