How to Lie with Statistics

Why it’s on the list: Huff’s 1954 primer on the ways numbers get used to mislead — the biased sample, the truncated axis, the well-chosen average, the correlation dressed up as a cause. Still the standard short introduction to statistical self-defence.

Where I saw it: A bare Amazon link (ISBN 0393310728, the W. W. Norton paperback) saved in the note.

Connections

• Statistics — the subject.
• Language of Discourse — the portfolio idea this sits closest to: how the presentation of evidence shapes what an argument can claim.