He lays down some thumb rules, which in the end comes come down to asking intelligent questions of the stats, especially of the conclusions. As long as the errors remain one-sided, he says, it is not easy to attribute them to bungling or accident.Īfter 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.
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. The intelligent reader would be skeptical - it is the unfortunate truth that it not chicanery much of the time, but incompetence. 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. This keeps the book interesting and entertaining, though for anyone even partly trained in statistics, it has very little educational value. 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. 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. Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics: The Pirates of the Powerpointĭarrell 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. Showing a trend over time? Choose a base year that skews things the way you want. Making an average? Choose the one (mean, mode, median, etc.) that best represents your case. It's really written to arm people with the right questions and a healthy dose of skepticism, but inevitably ends up helping the scammers as well. The lessons in this book are timeless.Īlso, if you do want to learn how to overstate your case or misrepresent something, this book can help.
So you have to increase the monetary figures to adjust for inflation, big deal. Yes, the book is a bit dated, but it didn't bother me in the least. Being informed necessitates understanding and being skeptical of statistics. Statistical analysis is so vital to determining how things actually stand and where we should be moving that people lacking awareness of basic logical/statistical fallacies are doomed to live within delusions. It's clear, concise, funny, not too complex, and above all important for anyone who wants to understand politics, economics, science, or life in general. This is one of those rare books I would recommend to almost anyone.
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