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    Graphs Don’t Lie: Bite-Size Stats, #2
    Graphs Don’t Lie: Bite-Size Stats, #2
    Graphs Don’t Lie: Bite-Size Stats, #2
    Ebook37 pages16 minutes

    Graphs Don’t Lie: Bite-Size Stats, #2

    By Lee Baker

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    About this ebook

    Sarah Palin, abortions, global warming and Usain Bolt. The CEO of Apple, 35 trillion gun deaths in 1995, Fox News and 193%. This book has got scandals galore!

    With 9 witty chapters taking you on a roller coaster tour of graphical lies, pictorial deceits and pie charts of mayhem, this might just be the most entertaining book about graphs you'll read this year.

    Did you know that between them, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney enjoyed a total of 193% support from Republican candidates in the 2012 US primaries? It must be true – it was on a pie chart broadcast on Fox News. Did you also know that the number 34 is smaller than 14, and zero is much bigger than 22? Honest, it's true, it was published in a respectable national newspaper after the 2017 UK General Election. There can't have been any kind of misdirection here because they were all shown on a pie chart.

    In this astonishing book, award winning statistician and author Lee Baker uncovers how politicians, the press, corporations and other statistical conmen use graphs and charts to deceive their unwitting audience. Like how a shocking, and yet seemingly innocuous statement as "Every year since 1950, the number of children gunned down has doubled", meant that there should have been at least 35 trillion gun deaths in 1995 alone, the year the quote was printed in a reputable journal. Or how an anti-abortion group made their point by trying to convince us all that 327,000 is actually a larger number than 935,573. Nice try, but no cigar – we weren't born yesterday.

    In his trademark sardonic style, the author reveals the secrets of how the statistical hustlers use graphs and charts to manipulate and misrepresent for political or commercial gain – and often get away with it.

    Written as a layman's guide to lying, cheating and deceiving with graphs, there's not a dull page in sight! And it's got elephants in it too…

    Discover the exciting world of lying with graphs and charts. Get this book, TODAY!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCSI Publishing
    Release dateMay 3, 2019
    ISBN9781386050230
    Graphs Don’t Lie: Bite-Size Stats, #2

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      Book preview

      Graphs Don’t Lie - Lee Baker

      Introduction

      When I do something, I give it everything I’ve got. It’s just the way I am and I don’t think I’ll ever change. And if you add up all of that ‘everything’, what do you get? 100%. You can’t give more than that. Unless you’re a footballer, where 110% is standard. But for the rest of us mere mortals, it’s 100%.

      Apparently, though, if you work for Fox News then 193% is the sum total of everything there is.

      During the 2012 US primaries, Fox News presented a wonderful pie chart showing the support levels that all three candidates enjoyed. It was a very slick presentation with a nice, shiny 3D chart, and anchorman Bryon Harlan said that Sarah Palin currently has the most support for the 2012 presidential nomination among Republican candidates.

      When it comes to landing the nomination, said Harlan, quoting directly from the pie chart on the screen, Palin is at 70%, about a third higher than this past July. Wow, 70% – it looks like she’s running away with it. Surely, none of the other candidates could catch her now, not with such large levels of support.

      Mike Huckabee, he continued, stands at 63%, with Mitt Romney at 60%. Wait, what? What just happened? The total support for all three candidates apparently stands at 193%. What does this mean? Does it mean that 193% of eligible voters will turn out in the primaries, or perhaps that this pie chart is 193% as effective as typical pie charts? No idea, but what I do know for sure is that there were some seriously under-handed shenanigans going on there.

      You see, the thing about graphs is that they don’t lie. You put some numbers into a spreadsheet, tell it which graph you want, and out pops a faithful representation of your data. If you give it the numbers 70, 63 and 60, it will plot them on your chosen graph, even as a pie chart.

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