ABSTRACT
A classic example of associating statistics with lying is attributed to British Prime Minister Disraeli, who declared, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics". Most people think of statistics as plural—as sets of numbers and figures and data. Statisticians think of it as singular—a subject matter that allows one to understand chance, cause and effect, correlation, and the scientific method. When someone is lying with statistics, they are unaware of or purposely ignoring statistical assumptions or rules and then make incorrect interpretations about what the data infer. According to statistics, one can only make predictions from a random sample of the population, in this case, of all eligible voters. The statistics often used to estimate the strength of relationships between variables are called correlations. When statistics are reported, the consumer should be concerned with how the data compare with other statistics.
