How Statistics Lie

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How Statistics Lie
Message posted by John (via 205.188.195.51) on November 29, 2001 at 1:21 AM (ET)

I am dong a high school presentation on how statistics lie. I need to find some reference materials that include graphs that I can put on an over-head projection that show false statistics and then the true statisitcs. Does anyone know where I could find such materials?

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Re: How Statistics Lie
Message posted by Darius (via 200.23.217.10) on November 29, 2001 at 10:18 AM (ET)

Try
http://www.vitalsource.org/book.htm

or if you want to do it yourself, obtain a random variable in two columns in excel with =rand(), change the equation to values (select the range an from menu select Edit-copy, Edit-Paste special-values) and make an operation between the two like first column and second ones (like a+b) and make an xy chart and a correlation (between one of the columns and the calculated ones), it will be wrong, because one variable could not be in both sides of the correlation (a very common mistake, finding the variables correlated).

Re: How Statistics Lie
Message posted by JG (via 128.8.23.28) on December 13, 2001 at 10:57 AM (ET)

The are books such as 'how to lie with statistics', 'a mathematician looks at a newspaper', etc. One of the postings on this web site about trivial differeces and statistical significance may be an example of the inappropriate use of statistical terminology.

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