Book Review - How to Lie with Statistics (Darrell Huff)

How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff is a book for you if you ever have this feeling when you look at a survey results, you are shocked by it. The results are out of your expectations. Or when you look at a certain diagrams, you are shocked by the extent of it. Or you are curious to know the trick behind how marketers, politicians and any other people that uses data, use visual presentation, survey methods and statistical methods to get the desired results they want and 'market' their ideas to you.

It is a very simple to read book, even non-statistician would have enjoyed this book immensely. Aptly describe by the author Darrell Huff, this book is for the laymen to learn some 'self-defense', not to be easily deceived by tricks.

I am a statistician myself and I have benefited greatly from this book. Not that I would use this tricks to deceive people but it opened up another world for me. Yes, being a statistician I am less easily deceived by the survey results published in the newspapers but this book also includes visual presentations as well which statistician might have overlooked its importance.

I strongly recommend this book to all people, so that we can have a better representation of the world and not be easily swayed.

For this book, I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars for its easy reading for both statisticians and non-statisticians. It is a good weekend-reading book.