How to Lie with Statistics

Chapter 9 covers the general practice of using statistics to mislead an audience to false conclusions. “Statisticulation”—a combination of the words statistics and manipulation—is the term Huff coins to describe this act. He clarifies that not all inaccurate statistics result from intentional deception by the statistician; they may also result from salespeople or journalists who present the data after its creation. He notes that most of these manipulative statistics are made to exaggerate the result, which makes it harder to argue that this deceptive framing is unintentional.

Huff continues by discussing other methods of manipulation he didn’t cover in the previous chapters. Using maps, particularly of the US, without accounting for the facts that some states have a large area and a small population can distort whatever statistic they claim to represent.

In the next section, Huff warns the reader to look for decimals. Many statistics cannot have results that are accurate enough to justify their use, so their inclusion is an exaggeration to make the result look more precise. This is especially true for statistics created from small sample sizes. Huff continues with a warning about percentages. He notes that confusion stems from the number used as a base and the method used to get the percentage.