[Ads-l] ... on "Lies, damned lies & statistics"?

[Stephen Goranson]

I agree (with LH) that the "lies, damned lies" version is the most effective and affecting version, the best written, most memorable. Apparently this was achieved after the three misleading court witnesses and the fib lie versions.

Among the interesting aspects of this evolution, I'd say, is Robert Giffen reporting--apparently accurately--on the evolution:
 "An old jest runs to the effect that there are three kinds of comparison among liars. There are liars, there are outrageous liars, and there are scientific experts. This has lately been adapted to throw dirt upon statistics. There are three degrees of comparisons, it is said, in lying. There are lies, there are outrageous lies, and there are statistics. Statisticians can afford to laugh at and profit by jokes at their expense. There is so much knowledge which is unobtainable except by statistics, especially the knowledge of the condition and growth of communities and growth of communities in the mass, that, even if the blunders in using statistics were greater and more frequent than they are, the study would still be indispensable. But just because we can afford to laugh at such jests we should be ready to turn them to account, and it is not difficult to discover one of the principal occasion for the jest I have quoted, and profit by the lesson."

“On international statistical comparisons”, Economic Journal 2 (6) (1892), 209–238, first paragraph. In a footnote it is stated that the paper was read at a meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science at Hobart in January 1892. 

Also perhaps interesting: quote-magnet Twain misattributing the "statesman' quote to quote-magnet Disraeli.

Stephen Goranson
http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/

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