Book review: How to Lie With Statistics

I’m not lying: this book is incredible.

I’m constantly reading books in various areas: people management, time management, comics, sales, marketing, history, self-help, money management, philosophy, health, sci-fi, etc.

Right now, in this blog, I’m writing book reviews that are more relevant to this page. Regarding the book: “How to Lie With Statistics” by Darrell Huff, even though it is not necessarily about development or management, I felt it was a must to write something.

I can see statistics everywhere I go or if I read the news or talk with friends. But still, why did I want to present this book here? Well, you guessed it right. I saw so many statistics in the IT world too. When working on a project, you can see statistics in sprint planning or reviews. Presenting in a “better” way, even not the most successful sprints.

This book is really short, and I finished it fast, but it showed me a lot of how people deceive the majority with some basic technics. Sometimes it’s just for marketing purposes, better sales, or selling an idea, but overall, they are deceiving the average person.

Is it ethical? It depends on who you are asking. But for sure, it’s a must to know these simple but very effective technics when any statistics are presented to you. After reading this book, I already see everywhere:

• • • Trying to sell a product with statistics: “78% is using product X”, but they just asked 1000 people, most probably they asked in a wealthy or poor area. But you don’t know that.
    • The proportions in the diagrams.
    • Different average calculations.
    • Etc.

Initially, I thought it would be a boring book about statistics, only with a catchy title. But I’m glad that I was wrong.