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Huff How To Lie With Statistics Sparknotes

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Although statistics can explain events in the world, it can also be used deceive people into believing the wrong information. In How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 1954) provides numerous examples where statistics can be used to trick the general public and they also provided ways where the reader is able to avoid being tricked by inaccurate statistics. It also explains how people could interpret statistics incorrectly because the information was given in a dishonest way. In each chapter, the book goes in depth about different parts of statistics and how people use them to fool people with information. For example in Chapter 2, Huff goes in depth about the word average and how people could be using different numbers when speaking about the “average” of a data set. Huff also helps the reader from being deceived by making them question what type of average is being used when being faced with information stating about the average of a data set. …show more content…

Normally when someone gives data, people assume it to be correct and trustworthy but this book made me realize that I should be skeptical with any information presented to me. For example, in chapter 5 Huff was explaining how people could manipulate graphs to portray what they want to show by simply changing the intervals of numbers on the x and y axis. If I was reading a paper that had the incorrect graph about Government Pay Rolls Stable, I would have honestly believed it because the government should be a reliable source. But Huff explains how people want to hide certain information by masking it in different ways. This aspect of the book made me want to question information that I deemed to be

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