Hugh Barker - Lying Numbers: How Maths and Statistics Are Twisted and Abused

Hugh Barkeris a non-fiction author and editor; as the latter he has edited several successful popular maths books, including A Slice of Pi. He is the author of Million Dollar Maths(Atlantic Books, October 2018) and High Tech Maths(Atlantic, 201920). Hugh is a keen amateur mathematician, and was accepted to study maths at Cambridge University aged sixteen. Japanese rights for Million Dollar Mathsrecently sold for 21,000 after a three-way auction.

Praise for Million Dollar Maths

Great fun. A clear, original and highly readable account of the curious relationship between mathematics and money. Professor Ian Stewart author of Significant Figures

A lively crash course in the mathematics of gambling, investing, and managing. Hugh Barker makes deep ideas fun and profitable. William Poundstone author of How to Predict the Unpredictable

Also by Hugh Barker

Million Dollar Maths
The Forking Trolley

ROBINSON

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Robinson

Copyright Hugh Barker, 2020

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-47214-360-0

Robinson

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Little, Brown Book Group

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Id like to dedicate this book to Diane and Leah, for helpful suggestions, feedback, endless patience and cups of coffee, among much, much more.

Most people are liars. Its a sad fact, but statistically it has been proven that 97 per cent of men and 96 per cent of women tell at least three lies a day. Furthermore, in any single year, adults tell an average of 589 lies, ranging from white lies to partial truths to raging whoppers.

OK, I was lying there, I made up those facts. They didnt even make any mathematical sense. They werent based on any actual research: it is what the experts refer to as bullshit. I promise if I tell any more lies in this book, I will own up to them. Its just an example of the most basic way that numbers can be used deceptively, which is by simply making the figures up as you go along.

However, you can use genuine figures and research and still find ways to mislead people you can cherry-pick useful statistics, design misleading visual imagery (such as poorly constructed graphs), compare apples with oranges, give only part of the truth, or exploit peoples natural cognitive biases and fallacies. The numbers dont lie, but people do: there is a wide variety of ways that people using numbers can either lie about what the numbers say or use the data in a creative way to mislead an audience.

Heres a real bit of research from a 2018 MIT study into fake news on social media (the study was specifically based on Twitter). The researchers found that far more false stories than real ones go viral, and that on average, a false story reaches 1,500 people six times quicker than a true story does. And fascinatingly, this cant be blamed on Twitter bots, as they amplify false and true stories at the same rate it is humans that fall for the false stories at a higher rate and are far more likely to retweet them fake news is 70 per cent more likely to be passed on by humans.