📚 How to Lie with Statistics
- Author
- Darrell Huff
- Year of release
- 1954
- Genre
- Statistics
- Pages
- 144
- Average WPM
- 342
- Date Started - Finished
- 15-Mar-2022 to 16-Mar-2022
- Time took
- 1.36 Hours
About the book
What I Liked About It
- It was a unique book with a different perspective on statistics
- Showed real life scenarios for the statistical examples talked about
How I Discovered It
Recommended to me by Dr. Patrick Mukala
Who Should Read It?
- Who wants to learn more about statistics
- Get a different perspective about statistics
Actionable Takeaways
Be careful when you look at statistics
Top Quotes
Round numbers are always false.
A well-wrapped statistic is better than Hitler’s “big lie”; it misleads, yet it cannot be pinned on you.
(Average) is a trick commonly used, sometimes in innocence but often in guilt, by fellows wishing to influence public opinion or sell advertising space.
Knowing nothing about a subject is frequently healthier than knowing what is not so, and a little learning may be a dangerous thing.
A difference is a difference only if it makes a difference
IF YOU can’t prove what you want to prove, demonstrate something else and pretend that they are the same thing
There are many other forms of counting up something and then reporting it as something else. The general method is to pick two things that sound the same but are not.
Summary + Notes
Praise
Round numbers are always false.
Introduction
A well-wrapped statistic is better than Hitler’s “big lie”; it misleads, yet it cannot be pinned on you.
CHAPTER 1: The Sample with the Built-in Bias
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Does early discovery of cancer save lives? Probably. But of the figures commonly used to prove it the best that can be said is that they don’t.
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Polls in general are biased in one specific direction, the direction of the Literary Digest error.
CHAPTER 2: The Well - Chosen Average
Use a different kind of average each time, the word “average” having a very loose meaning. It is a trick commonly used, sometimes in innocence but often in guilt, by fellows wishing to influence public opinion or sell advertising space.
CHAPTER 3: The Little Figures That Are Not There
Knowing nothing about a subject is frequently healthier than knowing what is not so, and a little learning may be a dangerous thing.
CHAPTER 4: Much Ado about Practically Nothing
Sometimes the big ado is made about a difference that is mathematically real and demonstrable but so tiny as to have no importance. This is in defiance of the fine old saying that a difference is a difference only if it makes a difference.
CHAPTER 7: The Semiattached Figure
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IF YOU can’t prove what you want to prove, demonstrate something else and pretend that they are the same thing.
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There are many other forms of counting up something and then reporting it as something else. The general method is to pick two things that sound the same but are not.
CHAPTER 9: How to Statisticulate
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MISINFORMING people by the use of statistical material might be called statistical manipulation; in a word (though not a very good one),
statisticulation. -
Not all the statistical information that you may come upon can be tested with the sureness of chemical analysis or of what goes on in an assayer’s laboratory. But you can prod the stuff with 5 simple questions, and by finding the answers avoid learning a remarkable lot that isn’t so.
- Who Says So?
- How Does He Know?
- What’s Missing?
- If you are looking at total deaths rather than the death rate, don’t neglect the fact that there are more people now than there used to be.
- Did Somebody Change the Subject?
- Does It Make Sense?
- There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.