Books Download Free How to Lie with Statistics Online

How to Lie with Statistics

Darrell Huff

Paperback | Pages: 142 pages

Rating: 3.87 | 9863 Users | 1035 Reviews

Identify Books Toward How to Lie with Statistics

Original Title:	How to Lie With Statistics
ISBN:	0393310728 (ISBN13: 9780393310726)
Edition Language:	English

Representaion As Books How to Lie with Statistics

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics: The Pirates of the Powerpoint Darrell Huff uses a simple, but effective literary device to impress his readers about how much statistics affect their daily lives and their understanding of the world. He does this by pretending that the book is a sort of primer in ways to use statistics to deceive, like a manual for swindlers, or better, for pirates. He then pretends to justify the crookedness of the book in the manner of the retired burglar whose published reminiscences amounted to a graduate course in how to pick a lock and muffle a footfall: The crooks already know these tricks; honest men must learn them in self-defense. This keeps the book interesting and entertaining, though for anyone even partly trained in statistics, it has very little educational value. Of course, the title of this book and Huff’s little charade would seem to imply that all such operations are the product of intent to deceive. The intelligent reader would be skeptical — it is the unfortunate truth that it not chicanery much of the time, but incompetence. On the other hand, Huff is pretty clear that the ‘errors’ if that is what they are always seem to come down on the side of the interested party. As long as the errors remain one-sided, he says, it is not easy to attribute them to bungling or accident. No More Mr. Nice Guy After being fellow pirates for much of the book, in the concluding chapter Huff finally lets go if his pet charade and faces up to the more serious purpose of the book: explaining how to look a phony statistic in the eye and face it down; and no less important, how to recognize sound and usable data in that wilderness of fraud to which the previous chapters have been largely devoted. He lays down some thumb rules, which in the end comes come down to asking intelligent questions of the stats, especially of the conclusions. Asking such questions require the readers to be aware of the tendency of stats to mislead and to not be dazzled by the numbers. Huff’s book is primarily an attempt to pull down the high estimation automatically awarded to anybody willing to quote numbers. It is a fun evening read for the expert, who may then roll his eyes and say that there is nothing of real value in the book. But as its popularity attests to, it seems to be an important book for the lay reader, just by serving a reminder that the pirates are still out there — wielding their charts.

Point Epithetical Books How to Lie with Statistics

Title	:	How to Lie with Statistics
Author	:	Darrell Huff
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Deluxe Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 142 pages
Published	:	September 1st 1982 by W. W. Norton & Company (first published 1954)
Categories	:	Nonfiction. Science. Business. Mathematics. Economics

Rating Epithetical Books How to Lie with Statistics

Ratings: 3.87 From 9863 Users | 1035 Reviews

Notice Epithetical Books How to Lie with Statistics

It's a fun book to read. If you have some stats background every chapter would make you nod and scream "OMG! Been there! Done that..." It was first published in 1954, but it's still applicable today.It's a great read for those of you who never touched stats at all, as it shows common fallacies and tactics people can use to manipulate your thinking. It's especially easier when numbers are involved. E.g. people stop thinking critically when someone says some specific numbers: "98.87% of numbers

Recommended by both Jamie S. Z. and my Statistical Foundations professor. Really engaging and common-spoken, eager to make us adroit critical thinkers of statistical information. The main problem, of course, is its age, which enthusiastically describes plush neighborhoods with an average income of $15,000 and the enormous profits of $42 a week. Still, it has the fervor to educate us because, as H.G. Wells once prophesied, "Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient

60+ years later and it's still one of the best out there to prove the basic point. And yet, people are still falling for all the old tricks. Amusing and informative read, plus it has fun relics of the 50s in spades, like mentioning that the cold isn't caused by a germ, but we don't know what it is (Rhinovirus was officially discovered 2 years after the publication of this).Really tho, my favourite thing about this book is that people today are arguing that media was some ideal thing in say, the

This little book was first published in the Fifties and has remained in print even as the cover cost and the examples of merchandise in the book have been updated for inflation. Why? Because the principles it teaches are just as important now as then. See how government, big business, pressure groups and labor all manipulate us with number-mangling to indicate changes in prices, wages or unemployment are better or worse than they really are, or how the government's policy is the right one even



I didnt realize at first that this book was written in 1954. Its still relevant today; math and people dont change. Its written in a fun, conversational style with lots of concrete examples that make the topics easy to understand. Even if youve already studied statistics, its a good refresher to see how theyre used in everyday media.

OK, first off, it isn't normal that I give a math book 5 stars. I often find them dull, boring, and difficult to read. However, How to lie with statistics was as funny as it was informative. Duff does a good job of not only explaining what tricks people use on statistics to twist the facts, but he gives poignant examples that were just as relevant when he wrote this book as they are today. What I found most interesting is how he dissected the "logic" that uses these techniques to explain how