How To Lie With Statistics
''How to Lie with Statistics'' is a book written by Darrell Huff in 1954, presenting an introduction to statistics for the general reader. Not a statistician, Huff was a journalist who wrote many how-to articles as a freelancer. The book is a brief, breezy illustrated volume outlining the misuse of statistics and errors in the interpretation of statistics, and how errors create incorrect conclusions. In the 1960s and 1970s, it became a standard textbook introduction to the subject of statistics for many college students. It has become one of the best-selling statistics books in history, with over one and a half million copies sold in the English-language edition. It has also been widely translated. Themes of the book include "Correlation does not imply causation" and "Using random sampling." It also shows how statistical graphs can be used to distort reality. For example, by truncating the bottom of a line or bar chart so that differences seem larger than they are. Or, by r ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Darrell Huff
Darrell Huff (July 15, 1913 – June 27, 2001) was an American writer, and is best known as the author of '' How to Lie with Statistics'' (1954), the best-selling statistics book of the second half of the twentieth century. Career Huff was born in Gowrie, Iowa, and educated at the University of Iowa, (BA 1938, MA 1939). Before turning to full-time writing in 1946, Huff served as editor of '' Better Homes and Gardens'' and ''Liberty'' magazine. As a freelancer, Huff produced hundreds of "How to" feature articles and wrote at least sixteen books, most of which concerned household projects. One of his biggest projects was a prize-winning home in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, where he lived until his death. Personal life Huff married Frances Marie Nelson in 1937. At her instigation, Huff gave up his editorial work (which had become a "rat race" for him) and they moved to California in 1946, bought ten acres in the Valley of the Moon. They built their own house, and later se ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Irving Geis
Irving Geis (October 18, 1908 – July 22, 1997) was an American artist who worked closely with biologists. Geis's hand-drawn work depicts many structures of biological macromolecules, such as DNA and proteins, including the first crystal structure of sperm whale myoglobin. Early life and education Geis was born in New York City, and lived in Anderson, South Carolina for a time. He studied architecture at Georgia Tech from 1925 to 1927, and went on to get a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania in 1929. From there he attended the University of South Carolina from 1932 to 1933, graduating with a degree in design and painting in the midst of the Great Depression. Career Geis served as a coauthor and illustrator of many biochemical books that were written by Albert Lehninger and Richard E. Dickerson, as well as the book ''How to Lie with Statistics'' by Darrell Huff. He was a frequent contributor to ''Scientific American''. In addition to his technical illustrat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Statistics
Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industrial, or social problem, it is conventional to begin with a statistical population or a statistical model to be studied. Populations can be diverse groups of people or objects such as "all people living in a country" or "every atom composing a crystal". Statistics deals with every aspect of data, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of statistical survey, surveys and experimental design, experiments. When census data (comprising every member of the target population) cannot be collected, statisticians collect data by developing specific experiment designs and survey sample (statistics), samples. Representative sampling assures that inferences and conclusions can reasonably extend from the sample ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Social Science
Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of society", established in the 18th century. It now encompasses a wide array of additional academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, history, linguistics, management, communication studies, psychology, culturology, and political science. The majority of positivist social scientists use methods resembling those used in the natural sciences as tools for understanding societies, and so define science in its stricter modern sense. Speculative social scientists, otherwise known as interpretivist scientists, by contrast, may use social critique or symbolic interpretation rather than constructing empirically falsifiable theories, and thus treat science in its ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including websites, Application software, software applications, music, audiovisual, and print materials. The Archive also advocates a Information wants to be free, free and open Internet. Its mission is committing to provide "universal access to all knowledge". The Internet Archive allows the public to upload and download digital material to its data cluster, but the bulk of its data is collected automatically by its web crawlers, which work to preserve as much of the public web as possible. Its web archiving, web archive, the Wayback Machine, contains hundreds of billions of web captures. The Archive also oversees numerous Internet Archive#Book collections, book digitization projects, collectively one of the world's largest book digitization efforts. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Statistics
Statistics (from German language, German: ', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industrial, or social problem, it is conventional to begin with a statistical population or a statistical model to be studied. Populations can be diverse groups of people or objects such as "all people living in a country" or "every atom composing a crystal". Statistics deals with every aspect of data, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of statistical survey, surveys and experimental design, experiments. When census data (comprising every member of the target population) cannot be collected, statisticians collect data by developing specific experiment designs and survey sample (statistics), samples. Representative sampling assures that inferences and conclusions can reasonably extend from the sample ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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General Reader
In nonfictional literature, the general reader is the target audience consisting of those without a specialized knowledge of a particular subject. The American writer Brander Matthews described the general reader as "the average man and woman of average intelligence and of average education." In the Victorian era, the increase in scientific writing for general readers began as access to formal education spread among the general public, leading to the genre known as pop science. The idea of targeting books for general readers has been criticized by academics Alison Jones and Leah Tether, who both consider the concept to be ill-defined and unhelpful for reaching audiences. Tether notes the widespread usage of the term by 1931, with the American librarian Douglas Waples Douglas Waples (March 3, 1893 – April 25, 1978) was a pioneer of the University of Chicago Graduate Library School in the areas of print communication and reading behavior. Waples authored one of the first b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Misuse Of Statistics
Statistics, when used in a misleading fashion, can trick the casual observer into believing something other than what the data shows. That is, a misuse of statistics occurs when a statistical argument asserts a falsehood. In some cases, the misuse may be accidental. In others, it is purposeful and for the gain of the perpetrator. When the statistical reason involved is false or misapplied, this constitutes a statistical fallacy. The consequences of such misinterpretations can be quite severe. For example, in medical science, correcting a falsehood may take decades and cost lives. Misuses can be easy to fall into. Professional scientists, mathematicians and even professional statisticians, can be fooled by even some simple methods, even if they are careful to check everything. Scientists have been known to fool themselves with statistics due to lack of knowledge of probability theory and lack of standardization of their tests. Definition, limitations and context One usable d ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Institute Of Mathematical Statistics
The Institute of Mathematical Statistics is an international professional and scholarly society devoted to the development, dissemination, and application of statistics and probability. The Institute currently has about 4,000 members in all parts of the world. Beginning in 2005, the institute started offering joint membership with the Bernoulli Society for Mathematical Statistics and Probability as well as with the International Statistical Institute. The Institute was founded in 1935 with Harry C. Carver and Henry L. Rietz as its two most important supporters. The institute publishes a variety of journals, and holds several international conference every year. Publications The Institute publishes five journals: *'' Annals of Statistics'' *'' Annals of Applied Statistics'' *'' Annals of Probability'' *'' Annals of Applied Probability'' *''Statistical Science'' In addition, it co-sponsors: * '' Electronic Communications in Probability'' * '' Electronic Journal of Probability'' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Correlation Does Not Imply Causation
The phrase "correlation does not imply causation" refers to the inability to legitimately deduce a cause-and-effect relationship between two events or variables solely on the basis of an observed association or correlation between them. The idea that "correlation implies causation" is an example of a questionable-cause logical fallacy, in which two events occurring together are taken to have established a cause-and-effect relationship. This fallacy is also known by the Latin phrase ''cum hoc ergo propter hoc'' ('with this, therefore because of this'). This differs from the fallacy known as '' post hoc ergo propter hoc'' ("after this, therefore because of this"), in which an event following another is seen as a necessary consequence of the former event, and from conflation, the errant merging of two events, ideas, databases, etc., into one. As with any logical fallacy, identifying that the reasoning behind an argument is flawed does not necessarily imply that the resulting c ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Random Sampling
In this statistics, quality assurance, and survey methodology, sampling is the selection of a subset or a statistical sample (termed sample for short) of individuals from within a statistical population to estimate characteristics of the whole population. The subset is meant to reflect the whole population, and statisticians attempt to collect samples that are representative of the population. Sampling has lower costs and faster data collection compared to recording data from the entire population (in many cases, collecting the whole population is impossible, like getting sizes of all stars in the universe), and thus, it can provide insights in cases where it is infeasible to measure an entire population. Each observation measures one or more properties (such as weight, location, colour or mass) of independent objects or individuals. In survey sampling, weights can be applied to the data to adjust for the sample design, particularly in stratified sampling. Results from prob ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Mel Calman
Melville Calman (19 May 1931 – 10 February 1994) was a British cartoonist best known for his "little man" cartoons published in British newspapers including the '' Daily Express'' (1957–63), '' The Sunday Telegraph'' (1964–65), '' The Observer'' (1965-6), '' The Sunday Times'' (1969–84) and '' The Times'' (1979–94). Early life Born in Stamford Hill, North London, Mel Calman was the youngest of the three children of Clement Calman, a timber merchant, and his wife, Anna (both Russian-Jewish immigrants who came to England about 1912). Evacuated to Cambridge to avoid the Blitz in World War II, he was educated at the Perse School. Failing to gain entrance to read English at the University of Cambridge, he returned to London where he enrolled at the Borough Polytechnic Art School. After two years of national service, he studied illustration at Saint Martin's School of Art. Career In 1956, he attempted to find work as a freelance cartoonist. '' Punch'' was disc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |