How to Lie with Statistics

by Darrell Huff

You have in reality the case that sounds like a joke or a figure of speech: Nearly everybody is below average.

Often an average—whether mean or median, specified or unspecified—is such an oversimplification that it is worse than useless. Knowing nothing about a subject is frequently healthier than knowing what is not so, and a little learning may be a dangerous thing.

This is in defiance of the fine old saying that a difference is a difference only if it makes a difference.

It’s all a little like the tale of the roadside merchant who was asked to explain how he could sell rabbit sandwiches so cheap. “Well,” he said, “I have to put in some horse meat too. But I mix ’em fifty-fifty: one horse, one rabbit.”