Content deleted Content added
doi-access = free |
Institute of Mathematical Statistics |
||
Line 32:
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|url=http://www-stat.wharton.upenn.edu/~steele/Publications/PDF/TN148.pdf|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110807201652/http://www-stat.wharton.upenn.edu/~steele/Publications/PDF/TN148.pdf|url-status=dead|title=Darrell Huff and Fifty Years of ''How to Lie with Statistics''|archivedate=February 23, 2021 |author-first =J. Michael |author-last =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.
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.
| |||