ABSTRACT
Almost everyone has heard that "figures don't lie, but liars can figure." We need statistics, but liars give them a bad name, so to be able to tell the liars from the statisticians is crucial.
It is commonly believed that anyone who tabulates numbers is a statistician. This is like believing that anyone who owns a scalpel is a surgeon. A statistician is one who has learned how to get valid evidence from statistics and how (usually) to avoid being misled by irrelevant facts. It's too bad that we apply the same name to this kind of person that we use for those who only tabulate. It's as if we had the same name for barbers and brain surgeons because they both work on the head.
