Status Updates From How to Lie with Statistics

This is definitely expanding my perspective on statistics. I always thought “average” meant “mean”. Maybe this has changed over time. Either way, I’ll never trust an “average” again without specifically understanding the type.

This chapter just seemed to reinforce my opinions. Polls are pretty much meaningless and don’t believe it as fact when a study states something like “most Americans believe this…” these type of statistics should only be respected when they are very transparent about how the survey was performed.

I like the author’s style. There’s humor in the misuse of statistics. It’s also interesting to note that this was written almost 70 years ago yet still rings true.

Great little book