Darrell Huff spent most of his life as a journalist and writer, yet he gained worldwide fame as an expert in statistics. This recognition came thanks to his most successful book, How to Lie with Statistics, written back in 1954 but still relevant to this day. At least, publishers continue to successfully reprint it time and again.
The entire tone of the book can be summarized with its very first epigraph, which quotes Benjamin Disraeli: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
No, the author does not try to portray statistics as a terrible or useless science. Instead, in a light and ironic manner, he explains what many people perceive as infernal mathematical gibberish. He also demonstrates how numbers can be used to manipulate opinions and the perception of information.
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