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How to Lie With Statistics (and get away with it)

November 14, 2026 · 40 min

Show notes

Aren't statistics wonderful things. If used correctly they can provide profound illumination on how the world is. But let's say you didn't want to do that. How would you use every trick in the book to manipulate, fool, and lie to people with statistics to believe whatever you want them to. Well, that is just what we are going to look at today.

Uploaded 04-06-24

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Article on Correlation and Causation: https://www.nature.com/articles/nmeth.3587

00:00 Fantastic Statistics and Where to Find Them
02:04 Devious definitions
04:48 Strange inferences
07:47 Samples and Representativeness
12:01 The Average Joe
16:17 The Buttery Biscuit Base Rate Neglect
19:26 The Abuse of Proportions
23:03 Correlation and Causation
26:59 Causation and Attribution Errors
29:30 The Dazzle of Statistics

Standard Deviation Curve example: By Ajay Raavi MD JD - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=116977508

Spurious correlations website: https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations



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