Huff's short book/ long pamphlet is tandard reading before you pass the Writing Requirement at my undergrad school (Marlboro College). Unlike Strunk & White's _Elements of Style_, it is not brilliantly written. However, it amusingly and very clearly illustrates Twain's (?) quote:
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
You'll never be swayed by numbers in an article again without checking out their stats methodology. ( )

A must ( )

Good, reasonably entertaining introduction to the basic ideas behind statistics as used in the "popular" sphere. No serious complaints, but it doesn't particularly stand out as insightful, mostly because of a few problems:

- Old, so it uses outdated terms and examples that can be confusing and sometimes insulting - I didn't understand a couple of examples at all
- The use of maths is confusing - it says everything in word form instead of equations, which doesn't particularly help those with trouble with maths and for those who are good with it requires a lot of mental translation. This is a problem with 1 chapter mainly.
- The last chapter is basically a recapitulation in different terms of the others. This isn't a big deal, I was just hoping for more general advice along similar lines about spotting lines
- The illustrations don't really add much mostly - they aren't particularly funny or helpful, which is a shame.

As it's a big market I'm being a bit more critical than I would otherwise. Summary: good book, good introduction, worth reading if you get it, but nothing extraordinary. ( )

This book should be on every priority list you have. Statistics and percentages seem to make up most of the click bait articles today, and are used by media and articles left and right to try to convince you about just about anything. Learn how to protect yourself from bad statistics, from bad reporting. This is definitely a must read for that! ( )

Funny book, but also full of useful concepts. ( )