Huff recalls the Literary Digest poll on the 1936 USA presidential election, which predicted Landon to beat Roosevelt by a landslide. Bias creeps in very easily and even if the rest of the study is letter perfect, the result can be rubbish. If your sample isn’t representative and random or is too small, then your study may be less reliable than an intelligent guess. The ‘tour’ on how charlatans lie with statistics and how to spot it includes: To do so is like refusing to read because writers sometimes use words to hide facts. By the same token it makes no sense to reject all statistics. Surveys and statistical claims are everywhere and it makes sense to have a closer look at the numbers. Huff wryly notes that although one does not always intend to deceive, “ the fact is that statistics is as much an art as it is a science…often the statistician must choose between methods, a subjective process…in commercial practice he is about as unlikely to select an unfavourable method as a copywriter is call his sponsor’s product flimsy and cheap when he might well say light and economical” “ The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact minded culture is employed to sensationalise, inflate, confuse and oversimplify.” While statistical methods and reporting are necessary, without writers who are honest and readers who know what they mean, the “ result can only be semantic nonsense”. You’d be surprised to see how many anecdotes have modern day equivalents.
Despite some rather dated examples it’s as relevant today as it was just over 60 years ago. You don’t need to know much about statistics and could finish it in a couple of hours. It’s only 124 pages and filled with cartoons. Way back in 1954, journalist Darrell Huff wrote this quirky little book as a ‘primer’ on how to lie with statistics and how to spot the tricks. How to lie with Statistics by Darrel Huff
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