How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of How to Lie with Statistics
Book Review: Shows anyone can manipulate statistics - Essential reading
Summary: 5 Stars
Are you normally impressed when someone is using statistics? You will think twice about numbers after reading this book. In a very humurous and easy to understand way it illustrates how data can easily be manipulated to prove almost anything. I think this book is essential reading material for anyone who has to deal with numbers (e.g. market researchers) and very interesting material for everybody else. After reading this book you will be able to spot statistical lies more easily.Book Review: Great reference for the statistically hard of thinking!
Summary: 5 Stars
I've owned this book for many years, and it's one of my favourites. It demonstrates how marketeers use graphs, diagrams for their own benefit, and in some way mislead without actually lying.If you want to show you are doing better than you actually are, or want to bend the truth in some way, then this book is for you (yes honestly!). If you are into Powerpoint and using graphics for presentation, then it's great, or even for tabular number presentation it will help.
At the very least, you will understand more about what others say about the world around you.
Phrases like "The biggest increase since the last one" - think about it!
Book Review: Short, punchy, easy to read , eye opening.
Summary: 5 Stars
An excellent resume of the ways that statistics can be used to mislead without, technically, lying. I read my copy every couple of years or so just to refresh my cynicsm. Everyone with an interest in advertisng, politics, PR should read it.Book Review: A primer for critical thinking
Summary: 5 Stars
While anyone who has dealt with statistics in a professional capacity is probably familiar with the contents already, it is still a handy little reference. And for anyone in an introductory course of study or who is simply concerned enough to wonder about the truth of what they read, this is absolutely invaluable.It is not a long book, and some of the examples are dated (physicians recommending brands of tobacco, for instance), but the meat of the book is both accurate and extremely readable. It covers the ways that statistics can be made to show pretty much anything, both through deliberate manipulation and through simple sloppiness. The main chapters cover issues such as inadequate and biased samples, how to provide subtly and not-so-subtly misleading (though technically accurate) visual charts and representations, how to manipulate perception by eliminating inconvenient precision and adding spurious precision, how to manipulate perception by supplying numbers without context or by simply leaving inconvenient facts out, and how to confuse people thoroughly about correlation vs. cause-and-effect. The final chapter provides a nice summary: the questions you absolutely must ask about any figure you are presented with, in order to judge its worth.
As the author himself says, it may read something like a graduate text on dishonesty, but one can assume that people who deliberately wish to mislead have figured out how already; this is to educate the honest person who wishes to be alert. It is frequently used as a text in undergraduate statistics courses, for good reason.
Book Review: The average reader will like this book (probably)
Summary: 5 Stars
I first bought this book in 1977 when I was doing an Open University course. It is still as useful now as it was then. Anyone concerned at the spin and lies that gush from our friends in the government should possess this book. An approachable and essential guide to bulls**t detection.