Darrell Huff

difference

"A difference is a difference only if it makes a difference."

—Darrell Huff (1913-2001)

statistic Hitler big lie

"A well-wrapped statistic is better than Hitler's 'big lie'; it misleads, yet it cannot be pinned on you."

—Darrell Huff (1913-2001)

novelist statistician imagination

"Don't be a novelist — be a statistician. Much more scope for the imagination."

—Darrell Huff (1913-2001)

language statistics fact term semantic nonsense

"The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify. Statistical terms and statistical methods are necessary in reporting the mass data of social and economic trends, business conditions, 'opinion' polls, the census. But without writers who use the words with honesty and understanding and readers who know what they mean, the result can only be semantic nonsense."

—Darrell Huff (1913-2001)

treatment cure cold seven days week

"Proper treatment will cure a cold in seven days, but left to itself, a cold will hang on for a week."

—Darrell Huff (1913-2001)

statistics random sample

"The purely random sample is the only kind that can be examined with confidence by means of statistical theory, but there is one things wrong with it. It is so difficult and expensive to obtain for many uses that sheer cost eliminates it. A more economical substitute, which is almost universally used in such fields as opinion polling and market research, is called stratified random sampling."

—Darrell Huff (1913-2001)

language statistics confuse oversimplify

“The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify.”

—Darrell Huff (1913-2001)

prove demonstratestatistics collision fugure guaantee

“If you can’t prove what you want to prove, demonstrate something else and pretend that they are the same thing. In the daze that follows the collision of statistics with the human mind, hardly anybody will notice the difference. The semiattached figure is a device guaranteed to stand you in good stead. It always has.”

—Darrell Huff (1913-2001)

statistic false face suspension common sense

“Many a statistic is false on its face. It gets by only because the magic of numbers bring about a suspension of common sense”

—Darrell Huff (1913-2001)

IQ intelligence test creative imagination

“Just to clear the air, let's note first of all that whatever an intelligence test measures it is not quite the same thing as we usually mean by intelligence. It neglects such important things as leadership and creative imagination. It takes no account of social judgement or musical or artistic or other aptitudes, to say nothing of such personality matters as diligence and emotional balance.”

—Darrell Huff (1913-2001)

normalhundred penny toss fifty heads tails

“Hardly anybody is exactly normal in any way, just as one hundred tossed pennies will rarely come up exactly fifty heads and fifty tails.”

—Darrell Huff (1913-2001)

random sample chance universe statistician

“The basic sample is the kind called “random.” It is selected by pure chance from the “universe,” a word by which the statistician means the whole of which the sample is a part.”

—Darrell Huff (1913-2001)

statistical treatment hypnotic presence superstition

“Permitting statistical treatment and the hypnotic presence of numbers and decimal points to befog causal relationships is little better than superstition.”

—Darrell Huff (1913-2001)

subject emotional content attitude

“It is dangerous to mention any subject having high emotional content without hastily saying where you are for or agin it.”

—Darrell Huff (1913-2001)

virtue statistician desk twist distort journalist media

“What comes full of virtue from the statistician’s desk may find itself twisted, exaggerated, oversimplified, and distorted-through-selection by salesman, public-relations expert, journalist, or advertising copywriter.”

—Darrell Huff (1913-2001)