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Truth, Lies Statistics
Pirates, cats, Mexican lemons and North Carolina lawyers. Cheese consumption, margarine and drowning by falling out of fishing boats. This book has got it all.
A roller coaster of a book in 8 witty chapters, this might just be the most entertaining statistics book you’ll read this year.
Did you know that pirates caused global warming, and that a statistical lie gave rise to one of the fastest growing religions on the planet? Probably not – you might have missed the memo that day. Did you also know that organic food is the real cause of autism, and that Mexican lemons are a major cause of deaths on American roads? They’re true, honest – and this book has got the stats to prove it.
In this eye-opening book, award winning statistician and author Lee Baker uncovers the key tricks of the trade used by politicians, corporations and other statistical conmen to deceive, hoodwink and otherwise dupe the unwary. Like how the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer attempted to persuade us that 5 lots of 10 make 150, or how the President of the United States tried to convince us that 420,000 is a larger number than 782,000. Nice try boys, but we were awake that day!
In his trademark sardonic style, the author reveals the secrets of how the statistical hustlers manipulate and misrepresent data for political or commercial gain – and often get away with it.
Written as a layman’s guide to lying, cheating and deceiving with data and statistics, there’s not a dull page in sight!
Discover the exciting world of statistical cheating and persuasive misdirection. Get this book, TODAY!
A roller coaster of a book in 8 witty chapters, this might just be the most entertaining statistics book you’ll read this year.
Did you know that pirates caused global warming, and that a statistical lie gave rise to one of the fastest growing religions on the planet? Probably not – you might have missed the memo that day. Did you also know that organic food is the real cause of autism, and that Mexican lemons are a major cause of deaths on American roads? They’re true, honest – and this book has got the stats to prove it.
In this eye-opening book, award winning statistician and author Lee Baker uncovers the key tricks of the trade used by politicians, corporations and other statistical conmen to deceive, hoodwink and otherwise dupe the unwary. Like how the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer attempted to persuade us that 5 lots of 10 make 150, or how the President of the United States tried to convince us that 420,000 is a larger number than 782,000. Nice try boys, but we were awake that day!
In his trademark sardonic style, the author reveals the secrets of how the statistical hustlers manipulate and misrepresent data for political or commercial gain – and often get away with it.
Written as a layman’s guide to lying, cheating and deceiving with data and statistics, there’s not a dull page in sight!
Discover the exciting world of statistical cheating and persuasive misdirection. Get this book, TODAY!
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Published December 5, 2017
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February 18, 2018
That great observer of human behavior, Mark Twain, once noted that there were three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. In the century since Twain made that remark, the use (and frequent misuse) of statistics has become even more prevalent in our society, specifically in the realms of politics and marketing (two areas that really aren’t that dissimilar). Author Lee Baker, himself a statistician, has written a short but lively book, Truth, Lies & Statistics: How to Lie with Statistics, which helps readers to spot some of the most common fallacies, misuses, and deceptions associated with statistics.
Much like a magician explaining some of his tricks, Baker shows how unscrupulous marketing types manipulate their data in order to truthfully make statements like “80% of dentists surveyed recommend XYZ brand of toothpaste.” As Baker points out, statements of that nature can be literally true but very incomplete and highly slanted to produce a particular desired result. I won’t explain that particular bit of misdirection, but a similar example is the misuse of the word “average,” a word that has about a dozen different mathematical definitions. So, as Baker points out, if a multimillionaire moves into a middle class subdivision, depending on which definition you use, the “average” family wealth may change a great deal or not at all. Which definition someone uses, and the resulting “average wealth” that definition yields almost invariably tends to support the point a particular person is trying to make.
Although the science of statistics can be quite complex and well beyond the scope of a 40-page book, Baker includes little hard math in Truth, Lies, & Statistics, but he does explain a couple of key terms, “p-value” and “confidence interval” and, more important, what they mean when used in a statistical claim, and, even more important, what it means when someone fails to mention them. The book contains a number of examples, some of them quite recent, such as the dispute over the size of the crowd at President Trump’s inauguration. Others are more obscure, but even more fascinating, such as the story of the ship that sank on its initial launch because of a disastrous measurement error occurring during its construction. As the anecdote about the sunken ship illustrates, errors resulting from the misuse of statistics, whether willful manipulation by those promulgating the statistics or innocent misunderstandings by lay people, can have tragic consequences, such as the mistaken notion that various childhood vaccines caused autism, which led some well-meaning parents to needlessly expose their children to potentially deadly diseases.
I should point out that author Baker is English, so Truth, Lies, & Statistics uses English spelling conventions (ending words in –our instead of –or), and amounts of money are expressed as pounds instead of dollars. Further, some of the anecdotes and examples might be a bit unfamiliar for U.S. readers. However, the gist of what Baker is saying is easy to pick up, no matter which side of the Atlantic that a reader is located.
Truth, Lies, & Statistics is a breezy, inexpensive cautionary tale that can easily be read in under an hour. As such, it’s certainly no introductory course in statistics or a comprehensive look at the various fallacies associated with statistics (I’ve seen good books on the latter subject that were nearly ten times as long as Baker’s). But it should get readers examining a bit more carefully any time an advertisement or a politician throws out some statement involving a number and then claims that number to be definitive proof of the argument being made. In an era of fake news, it’s good to have Lee Baker as a guide to keep us on the lookout for fake statistics as well.
Much like a magician explaining some of his tricks, Baker shows how unscrupulous marketing types manipulate their data in order to truthfully make statements like “80% of dentists surveyed recommend XYZ brand of toothpaste.” As Baker points out, statements of that nature can be literally true but very incomplete and highly slanted to produce a particular desired result. I won’t explain that particular bit of misdirection, but a similar example is the misuse of the word “average,” a word that has about a dozen different mathematical definitions. So, as Baker points out, if a multimillionaire moves into a middle class subdivision, depending on which definition you use, the “average” family wealth may change a great deal or not at all. Which definition someone uses, and the resulting “average wealth” that definition yields almost invariably tends to support the point a particular person is trying to make.
Although the science of statistics can be quite complex and well beyond the scope of a 40-page book, Baker includes little hard math in Truth, Lies, & Statistics, but he does explain a couple of key terms, “p-value” and “confidence interval” and, more important, what they mean when used in a statistical claim, and, even more important, what it means when someone fails to mention them. The book contains a number of examples, some of them quite recent, such as the dispute over the size of the crowd at President Trump’s inauguration. Others are more obscure, but even more fascinating, such as the story of the ship that sank on its initial launch because of a disastrous measurement error occurring during its construction. As the anecdote about the sunken ship illustrates, errors resulting from the misuse of statistics, whether willful manipulation by those promulgating the statistics or innocent misunderstandings by lay people, can have tragic consequences, such as the mistaken notion that various childhood vaccines caused autism, which led some well-meaning parents to needlessly expose their children to potentially deadly diseases.
I should point out that author Baker is English, so Truth, Lies, & Statistics uses English spelling conventions (ending words in –our instead of –or), and amounts of money are expressed as pounds instead of dollars. Further, some of the anecdotes and examples might be a bit unfamiliar for U.S. readers. However, the gist of what Baker is saying is easy to pick up, no matter which side of the Atlantic that a reader is located.
Truth, Lies, & Statistics is a breezy, inexpensive cautionary tale that can easily be read in under an hour. As such, it’s certainly no introductory course in statistics or a comprehensive look at the various fallacies associated with statistics (I’ve seen good books on the latter subject that were nearly ten times as long as Baker’s). But it should get readers examining a bit more carefully any time an advertisement or a politician throws out some statement involving a number and then claims that number to be definitive proof of the argument being made. In an era of fake news, it’s good to have Lee Baker as a guide to keep us on the lookout for fake statistics as well.
Displaying 1 of 1 review