How to lie with Statistics

How to lie with statistics looks at different ways media or institutions manipulate the data, statistics, and graphs to build false narratives that benefit them. In the age of social media where misinformation can quickly catch fire, it's especially important to pay attention to the data that's presented to us and try to understand the biases and what’s missing. The author urges us to ask five questions about the statistics presented to us:

1. Who says so? We need to look for biases of the institution that's presenting us the data or the analysis - do they benefit from the conclusions?
2. How does he know? Is the sample size big enough to make reliable conclusions?
3. What's missing? Look for the data they are not providing - it could be the total number of people asked vs those who responded, it could be a correlation shown without standard errors which is a measure of reliability. It might be an omission of a reason that caused the change in lieu for something more desirable - something that fits the narrative.
4. Did somebody change the subject? More reported cases of a disease doesn't always mean more cases of a disease. Watch out for a switch between the raw figure and the conclusion.
5. Does it make sense?

This short & simple book is an ever-important read in today’s day and age.