Errors, Blunders, and Lies: How to Tell the Difference

In this pleasant and relatively short book, Errors, Blunders, and Lies: How to Tell the Difference, the author David Salsburg demonstrates the use of statistics. Written for those with a high school algebra background, it would, in fact, be comprehensible for most people without even that level of mathematics. His point is that to understand our world, we must be able to deal with uncertainty. Statistics gives us a tool to do exactly that. Errors are unavoidable; every observation (scientific measurement) is the sum of truth and error. But we also face circumstances in which observations are actually blunders or outright lies. Salsburg uses probability and statistics to uncover both blunders and lies.

The examples he discusses are taken from history and from his own experience. The first half of the book considers errors, multilinear regression, and correlation. Topics include the transit of Venus in the eighteenth century, human occupation of the West Bank in 1100 BCE, the contents of boxes of parboiled rice, the use of forced vital capacity to measure COPD, an antitrust case regarding cardboard boxes, predictors of heart disease, the correlation between high blood pressure and the failure to use sunscreen, and the Bible Code.

The section on blunders includes such topics as the use of an optical rangefinder in World War II, the manual timing of hundred-yard dashes, drug testing, and the genetic basis of diseases. The section on lies includes some examples of the use of statistics to uncover the lies. Topics include examining the lengths of the reigns of the legendary kings of Rome, determining which books were written by Davy Crockett, detecting falsified counts in Esdras I, and questioning the census data of African countries.

This book has provided me with a number of examples that I will use this coming semester in my Introduction to Statistical Methods course. I recommend the book to undergraduate statistics students and those teaching them.

Joel Haack is Professor of Mathematics at the University of Northern Iowa.