R: "lies, damned lies, and statistics" 1856??

[Stephen Goranson]

----- Forwarded message from goranson at duke.edu -----
    Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 07:13:19 -0400
    From: goranson at duke.edu
Reply-To: goranson at duke.edu
 Subject: Re: [ADS-L] R: "lies, damned lies, and statistics" 1856??
      To: amorelli <mariam11 at virgilio.it>



> Dear All,
> An old textbook of mine attributed the quotation to Mark
> Twain. Would that fit the possible dates?
> M.I.Amorelli
> ESP/ESP
> Faculties of Economics and Law,
> Sassari,
> Sardinia

The passage I sent in was not from 1856. Google Books gave an incorrect date
(1845) and incorrect title and titlepage. I confirmed searching keywords on
another page that it is much later.

Twain wrote that Benjamin Disraeli said it, but, so far we haven't found it in
his works. The oldest publication with the quotation so far mentioned in the
archives is 1892. The oldest claimed attribution (1894) is to Walter Bagehot.
You can find the details in the list archives. The links are at this page:

http://www.americandialect.org/

Stephen Goranson


----- End forwarded message -----

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