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Media & Communication · Information Literacy

Statistical Claims in the Wild

A topic within Information Literacy, itself one of 11 topics in that field and part of Media & Communication.

Reading on Statistical Claims in the Wild

3

A way in

  1. Start here

    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…

  2. Then

    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…

  3. Go deeper

    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

Book1954

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.

Book2004

More Damned Lies and Statistics: How Numbers Confuse Public Issues

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.

Other topics in Information Literacy