How to Lie with Statistics
Darrell Huff
Catalogues the standard tricks — the truncated graph, the biased sample, the unspecified average — by which real numbers are made to imply a false conclusion without anyone technically lying.
Media & Communication · Information Literacy
A topic within Information Literacy, itself one of 11 topics in that field and part of Media & Communication.
No prior grounding assumed.
How to Lie with Statistics
Darrell Huff · 1954
Catalogues the standard tricks — the truncated graph, the biased sample, the unspecified average — by which real numbers are made to imply a false…
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
More Damned Lies and Statistics: How Numbers Confuse Public Issues
Joel Best · 2004
Extends his own earlier argument to show that even sympathetic, well-intentioned advocates routinely misstate the statistics behind a cause, because…
Primary sources and full treatments.
Helping Doctors and Patients Make Sense of Health Statistics
Gigerenzer et al. · 2007
Argues that patients and physicians are routinely misled by health statistics not because they can't reason but because risks are reported in formats…
3 works
Darrell Huff
Catalogues the standard tricks — the truncated graph, the biased sample, the unspecified average — by which real numbers are made to imply a false conclusion without anyone technically lying.
Joel Best
Extends his own earlier argument to show that even sympathetic, well-intentioned advocates routinely misstate the statistics behind a cause, because a round, dramatic number spreads faster through the press than a hedged, accurate one.
Gigerenzer et al.
Argues that patients and physicians are routinely misled by health statistics not because they can't reason but because risks are reported in formats — relative risk, single-event probabilities — that are almost designed to be misread, and that switching to natural frequencies fixes most of the confusion.
link checked 17 Sept 2026