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How to Lie with Statistics

Darrell Huff,

Irving Geis (Illustrator)

3.87 · Rating details · 10,482 ratings · 1,118 reviews

Darrell Huff runs the gamut of every popularly used type of statistic, probes such things as the sample study, the tabulation method, the interview technique, or the way the results are derived from the figures, and points up the countless number of dodges which are used to fool rather than to inform.

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Paperback, 142 pages

Published September 1st 1982 by W. W. Norton & Company (first published 1954)

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Apr 06, 2014 Riku Sayuj rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: economics, r-r-rs

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 rem
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.
...more

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Aug 31, 2011 Eric Phetteplace rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: People who don't want to be ignoramuses their whole lives

Shelves: lis-web

This is one of those rare books I would recommend to almost anyone. 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. 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. Being informed necessitates understanding and being skeptical of sta ...more

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Jul 07, 2017 ALLEN rated it it was amazing

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 t ...more

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Nov 10, 2009 Fiver rated it really liked it

It seems a little shallow to rate this semi-pamphlet at four stars, as one of the must-read books, but that's exactly what I'm going to do.

This book earns four stars from me simply from its concisiveness and practicality. You can churn through this beauty in one sitting. It is entertaining, has excellent examples, introduces concepts in a wry, witty tone, and after ten years of courses, articles, books, and opinions, I have yet to learn a single thing about misleading statistics that wasn't taug ...more

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Jun 05, 2008 Seth rated it it was amazing

Yes, it has all the stuff you hear about: how people use stats to subtly (and not-so-subtly) misdirect the reader/listener, how to systematically recognize (or create) misinterpretations, and a strong implicit call to action for clearer information in public discourse.

But in the billion years since this classic came of age, we've all learned that other ways, some of them better presented. When it was written, many people believed the information they received in the papers, in magazines, and on ...more

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Jul 16, 2017 Dee Arr rated it really liked it

Shelves: reference

Noting that this book was published in 1954, one may instantly discount the information as outdated. However, there are recent events that can be related to some of the examples author Darrell Huff provides, and helps to increase the book's value.

For those who have fleetingly or never studied statistics, this is a good place to start. It is a quick and easily understandable read, written in plain English and with plenty of examples to prove the author's points. Personally, I have studied statist ...more

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Feb 25, 2017 elias rated it really liked it

A really fast read. And a fascinating one. Although I didn't pay attention to the release date before I began. So now I want to read another book discussing the same subject :3

These days, every claim is accompanied by stats to validate them. And when contradicting claims both have supporting studies behind them, you really have to stop and ask yourself what the fuck is going on. This is where this book comes to the rescue. Statisticians don't "lie" per se. But they do a lot of manipulation to b ...more

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Aug 09, 2017 Farhana rated it really liked it

Shelves: science

In class 5 or 6, when we first started doing maths of finding average, mean or mode, I really had no idea what they meant or even why I was doing them. Just sum up the numbers, divide by their number and get the average or arrange them in increasing order, take the number in the middle - what they meant even. Maybe I was just following the instructions because the books said so or doing things this way will bring me marks in the exam. That's it. No more thoughts.

Later when we learnt regression ...more

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Jan 29, 2018 Kristy K rated it it was amazing

Shelves: bill-gates, reference

Written over 60 years ago, this is still a highly relevant book that exposes the many flaws in statistics and how easy it is to manipulate findings. A short book that everyone should read.

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Nov 21, 2017 Audrey rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, 2017-books

I didn’t realize at first that this book was written in 1954. It’s still relevant today; math and people don’t change. It’s written in a fun, conversational style with lots of concrete examples that make the topics easy to understand. Even if you’ve already studied statistics, it’s a good refresher to see how they’re used in everyday media.

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Feb 28, 2020 May 舞 rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-ficition

It turns out that there are so many ways one could deliberately lie with statistics, whilst simultaneously giving an air of credibility to whatever crap they are purporting.

This book is both scary and highly entertaining. It's a quick but informative read based on real-life examples.
Here's one that was particularly illuminating (emphasis mine):

"Let us say that during a period in which race prejudice is growing you are employed to “prove” otherwise. It is not a difficult assignment. Set up a p It turns out that there are so many ways one could deliberately lie with statistics, whilst simultaneously giving an air of credibility to whatever crap they are purporting.

This book is both scary and highly entertaining. It's a quick but informative read based on real-life examples.
Here's one that was particularly illuminating (emphasis mine):

"Let us say that during a period in which race prejudice is growing you are employed to “prove” otherwise. It is not a difficult assignment. Set up a poll or, better yet, have the polling done for you by an organization of good reputation. Ask that usual cross section of the population if they think blacks have as good a chance as white people to get jobs. Repeat your polling at intervals so that you will have a trend to report.
Princeton’s Office of Public Opinion Research tested this question once. What turned up is interesting evidence that things, especially in opinion polls, are not always what they seem. Each person who was asked the question about jobs was also asked some questions designed to discover if he was strongly prejudiced against blacks. It turned out that people most strongly prejudiced were most likely to answer Yes to the question about job opportunities. (It worked out that about two-thirds of those who were sympathetic toward blacks did not think the black had as good a chance at a job as a white person did, and about two-thirds of those showing prejudice said that blacks were getting as good breaks as whites.) It was pretty evident that from this poll you would learn very little about employment conditions for blacks, although you might learn some interesting things about a man’s racial attitudes.
You can see, then, that if prejudice is mounting during your polling period you will get an increasing number of answers to the effect that blacks have as good a chance at jobs as whites. So you announce your results: Your poll shows that blacks are getting a fairer shake all the time.

The worse things get, the better your poll makes them look." ...more

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Jan 27, 2017 Steven rated it really liked it

Shelves: books-i-own, criticism, journalism, non-fiction, science

"The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify. Statistical methods and statistical terms are necessary in reporting the mass data of social and economic trends, business conditions, 'opinion polls', the census. But without writers who use the words with honesty and understanding and readers who know what they mean, the result can only be semantic nonsense… This book is a sort of primer in ways to use s

"The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify. Statistical methods and statistical terms are necessary in reporting the mass data of social and economic trends, business conditions, 'opinion polls', the census. But without writers who use the words with honesty and understanding and readers who know what they mean, the result can only be semantic nonsense… This book is a sort of primer in ways to use statistics to deceive. It may seem altogether too much like a manual for swindlers. Perhaps I can justify it 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." (10-11)

I never cared much for statistics; I slid through Methods & Statistics 1, 2, and 3 relatively untouched, until the first time I did my own research and had to analyze the data I had so diligently collected. That was the point at which statistical analyses became meaningful to me—I had a theory and I was looking to see whether there was any evidence for it. The data itself means nothing, of course. Numbers do not mean anything on their own. What you do with the numbers, how you expose (non-)relationships between them, is when things get interesting. And tricky—as this little book sets out to show.

Huff uses humor to show a variety of ways in which statistics may be – and examples of how they have been – misleading. The book is dated by now, basing its examples mostly on stuff from the '20s through to the '50s. This did not really bother me, however, nor did I feel it detracted from the main points—if anything, it makes the book feel quaint while at the same time highlighting the fact that little has changed in how statistics are (ab)used in contemporary society. If you have a background in statistics, How to Lie is unlikely to teach you anything new about them. However, it is still worth reading if only to underscore the need to pay attention to the pervasive presence and use of statistics.

I, as someone trained in psychology, like to think that they are mostly used for good. Much knowledge has surely been gained thanks to the insights that increasingly sophisticated statistical analyses have offered. But an analysis is only as good as the way in which it is conducted, and results only as good as the way in which they are conveyed.

Huff closes his book on a more serious note, abandoning the burglar-revealing-his-trade spiel with five questions to ask when encountering statistical information (but don't worry, the chapter is still titled How to Talk Back to Statistics). They are worth listing and remembering:

1] Who says so? Look for bias: who has an interest in the statistic?
2] How does he know? Watch out for a biased/limited sample.
3] What's missing? The absence of information, like the number of cases or which kind of average was used, can render a statistic virtually meaningless.
4] Did Somebody Change the Subject? Make sure that the conclusion follows from the type of raw data that was collected.
5] Does It Make Sense? Think about what the statistic is supposed to mean/tell you, and ask whether it makes sense. ...more

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Oct 23, 2007 Russell rated it really liked it

I'm just going to quote the Amazon.com review:

"There is terror in numbers," writes Darrell Huff in How to Lie with Statistics. And nowhere does this terror translate to blind acceptance of authority more than in the slippery world of averages, correlations, graphs, and trends. Huff sought to break through "the daze that follows the collision of statistics with the human mind" with this slim volume, first published in 1954. The book remains relevant as a wake-up call for people unaccustomed to ex I'm just going to quote the Amazon.com review:

"There is terror in numbers," writes Darrell Huff in How to Lie with Statistics. And nowhere does this terror translate to blind acceptance of authority more than in the slippery world of averages, correlations, graphs, and trends. Huff sought to break through "the daze that follows the collision of statistics with the human mind" with this slim volume, first published in 1954. The book remains relevant as a wake-up call for people unaccustomed to examining the endless flow of numbers pouring from Wall Street, Madison Avenue, and everywhere else someone has an axe to grind, a point to prove, or a product to sell. "The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify," warns Huff.

Although many of the examples used in the book are charmingly dated, the cautions are timeless. Statistics are rife with opportunities for misuse, from "gee-whiz graphs" that add nonexistent drama to trends, to "results" detached from their method and meaning, to statistics' ultimate bugaboo--faulty cause-and-effect reasoning. Huff's tone is tolerant and amused, but no-nonsense. Like a lecturing father, he expects you to learn something useful from the book, and start applying it every day. Never be a sucker again, he cries!

Even if you can't find a source of demonstrable bias, allow yourself some degree of skepticism about the results as long as there is a possibility of bias somewhere. There always is.

Read How to Lie with Statistics. Whether you encounter statistics at work, at school, or in advertising, you'll remember its simple lessons. Don't be terrorized by numbers, Huff implores. "The fact is that, despite its mathematical base, statistics is as much an art as it is a science." --Therese Littleton

This is book aimed at the honest soul who is merely trying to make sense of the stream of numbers and stats pouring in from all around.

This is another must read. ...more

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Feb 29, 2012 Nate rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, 2012, own, economics-stocks-business, classics, favorites, science, math

I still wonder why Trigonometry and Calculus are offered in high school, but Statistics is not. It's such a broad subject that is used in so many fields-even forgetting all of the numbers we read in magazines. I digress.

This book specifically focuses on the facts and figures that we see everyday, pretty much everywhere. I thought it was well written and extremely thorough, going from problems that happen during study collection, to the cherry picking and presentation of data itself. I had to gr ...more

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Oct 03, 2013 Grace rated it it was amazing

Shelves: educational, reference, for-teacher-review, how-to, math-statistics

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 the 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 they did it, what they trick your brain into seeing, and how you can question it effectively.

Duff talked about sample biases, which we can see in every day research. While his example was that of Yale graduates pay grades is a bit outdated, he shows how this sample represents a small number of people, and how it is most certainly a false representation based on logic, common sense, and science.

He then went on to dissect the differences between mean, median and mode, followed by inadequate samples (think sales pitch where you only ask 3 people versus more), tests that mislead and reveal nothing (like IQ tests), manipulation of graphs and scales, semi-attached figures, post hoc representations, and statistical manipulations. He did the same thing with each topic to show how you start with facts, manipulate it, and present it. Then he shows you how it's wool covering your eyes.

The last chapter was my favourite. It tells you how to pull the wool from your eyes and argue back against it by pointing out their chicanery. Essentially it was a recap of the previous chapters, then telling you not to be afraid to call out the BS you see in the media, advertising, or politics.

Duff does all this in a tongue-in-cheek way. He pulls no punches, nor does he sugar coat things. When I read this I could easily pick out several examples of every single thing he talked about from my own environment. Lies the media tells me to say so it's "politically correct", lies on the magazine back advert, graph manipulation in my precious National Geographic or Time Magazine... it was a disappointment to see how pervasive it is in our society. It's even more disappointing knowing that most people do not know what they are looking at and do not know that they are being swindled.

This is a book that everyone should read so they are more well informed about the world around them and can pull the wool from their eyes. ...more

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May 07, 2011 John Hibbs rated it it was amazing

This book was published in 1954 and some of the examples are dated but the principles it puts forth are still valid today--if not more so than ever--and the material is delivered in clear, concise, and even entertaining anecdotes and illustrations. It is also an easy read that can be easily finished in one day of concentrated effort.

How often do you hear statistics bandied about in the media or used to try to prove some special-interest point? "Of course" the people quoting the figures must be r ...more

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Jun 07, 2011 Mary rated it liked it

Shelves: conversation-makers

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 citizensh ...more

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Jan 14, 2012 Erin rated it did not like it

Shelves: 2012

This book was published in 1954, before Excel, and it hasn't been updated yet it's still being reissued. After reading this, I can only assume that B.E. (Before Excel) statistics were presented more often with illustrations rather than bar graphs and pie charts, which would just be weird now since it's so easy to prepare graphs in Excel. Or maybe the whole point of the book is that if you use illustrations you will be able to confuse your audience with more ease. Either way, I didn't really lear ...more

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Jul 08, 2017 Rich Lundeen rated it it was ok

I love the title.

The content feels outdated. I think people lie with statistics much better today than when this was published. Yay, we're improving!

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Jan 09, 2019 11811 (Eleven) rated it liked it

Sneaky bastards.

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Mar 23, 2019 uosɯɐS rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics, critical-thinking, don-t-be-a-sucker, math, data-stats, journalistic

So...doing the library challenge, I needed 8 short books. And, if this is to be my year of data and statistics... well, this classic that I've heard of for years seems a good candidate.

It was definitely a worthwhile read. It did get me thinking about how statistics can be misused... but I do hope that some of the methods mentioned in this book are now out of date.

Some suggestions:
1 - Beware the word "average." It could mean mode, median, or true arithmetic mean. Even if it is the mean, a non-Bel ...more

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Jun 25, 2020 Daniel rated it it was amazing

This is an OLD book (written in 1950s). There I've got everyone's complaint out of the way. Its still as relevant today as it was when it was written just replace magazine/Newspaper with Webpage/blog add a few zeros to the number examples and your good.

In this day in age you should probably know what this book is teaching and if you do than its a quick nice reminder if you don't you need to read this book. The fact that a large amount of people are in the don't category is a condemnation of the ...more

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Jul 25, 2018 Robert rated it really liked it

An easy and quick read about how to protect yourself against misleading statistics and visualizations!
Interesting if you regularly follow the use or make data visualizations yourself.

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Aug 26, 2017 Mehdi Hassan rated it really liked it

When Bill Gates recommends a book, one cannot help but check it out. This is one of the most interesting and practical books I have read in a while. The book asks questions of the numbers that are thrown in our face everyday. I felt it has added another layer to my critical thinking skills and set myself apart from those who panic at daily news. Books like these will not give shortcuts to climbing a corporate ladder or increase salaries overnight; what it enforces is something more subtle: peace ...more

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Aug 12, 2017 Syed Fathi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: bought, statistics

Statistics are not safe from interpretation, statisticians interpretations may not be the same as what the public understands or defines certain things. The book aims to equip reader to navigate through these numbers and percentage, to analyze and have a second thought before arriving in any conclusion, in order not to fall into the trap of the manipulation. Huff noted that many statistical term has a loose meaning, this loose meaning can present a misrepresentation, whether unintentionally or i ...more

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Jun 08, 2017 Ailith Twinning rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2017, 2019

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 ...more

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Oct 19, 2018 Kan Bhalla rated it liked it

First few chapters made sense. Post that, I started questioning my own reasons for picking this up in the first place.
While it's a small book already, it's summary would have sufficed just as well.

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Jul 24, 2019 Pooja rated it liked it

Shelves: 100-pages

Traveling around India, Malaysia and Indonesia, I completed this short book.

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Jun 10, 2020 Annie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: non-fiction

A book for the non-specialists! “The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify”, writes Huff. The psychobabble and physics envy element of the specialist phenomenon reflects the statistical envy of the non-specialists. However, competence can rarely be duped without a dupe-able audience, so to speak. The examples provided are neat, though it is a purposive sample: fully grown adults being and propagatin ...more

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Dec 30, 2019 Ostap Andrusiv rated it it was amazing

Shelves: top-to-read

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 sh ...more

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