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How to Lie with Statistics

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How to Lie with Statistics is Darrell Huff's perennially best-selling[1] introduction to statistics for the general reader. Written in 1954, it is a brief, breezy, illustrated volume outlining the common errors, both intentional and unintentional, associated with the interpretation of statistics, and how these errors can lead to biased or inaccurate conclusions. Although a number of more recent versions have been released, the original edition contained humorous, witty illustrations by Irving Geis[2], which undoubtedly played a pivotal role in the success of the book.

Over time is has become the most widely read statistics book in history and over one-half million copies have been sold in the English language edition alone. In 2003 the Department of Economics of Shanghai University published an edition in Chinese.

Some themes of the book are "Correlation does not imply causation" and "Using Random Sampling". It also shows how statistical graphs can be used to distort reality:

  1. By truncating the bottom of a line or bar chart, one makes differences seem larger than they are
  2. By representing one-dimensional quantities on a pictogram by two- or three-dimensional objects to compare their sizes, one makes the reader forget that the images don't scale the same way the quantities do. Two rows of small images would give a better idea than one small and one big one.

Chapters

  1. The Sample with the Built-in Bias
  2. The Well-Chosen Average
  3. The Little Figures That Are Not There
  4. Much Ado about Practically Nothing
  5. The Gee-Whiz Graph
  6. The One-Dimensional Picture
  7. The Semi-attached Figure
  8. Post Hoc Rides Again
  9. How to Statisticulate
  10. How to Talk Back to a Statistic

Notes and references

  1. ^ "Over the last fifty years, How to Lie with Statistics has sold more copies than any other statistical text." J.M. Steele. "Darrell Huff and Fifty Years of How to Lie with Statistics. Statistical Science, 20 (3), 2005, 205–209.
  2. ^ In 1961, Geis would go on to illustrate the first protein crystal structure ever discovered, that of a sperm whale myoglobin

See also

 

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