TOW #3 How To Lie With Statistics by Darrell Huff (IRB)

Darrell Huff writes a very good book about the ways one is able to deceive other people. The book could be interpreted to have different purposes depending on the the audience. Branching from that idea, the book has two main audiences that it attempts to appeal to. The first group would be people who do not want to be deceived. This book would inform the audience of the many strategies that can be utilized to tricked by misleading graphs and charts. Another audience would be a group would would want to learn HOW to mislead others. In which case, this book would serve as a didactic, teaching the future scumbags how to make the ignorant fall victim to their sleazy methodology. This book uses a very tongue-and-cheek type of approach, allowing it to be entertaining at times, however, the extensive use of allusion makes certain analogies anachronistic. This weakens certain parts of the author's writing because I feel like I've missed some important joke that may help me to understand the text more accurately. Regardless, the book is also very blunt. It makes use of varying sentences structures by having longer, potentially boring sections, and quickly sums it up in a few words directly afterwards. This makes the text more easier to understand and helps to achieve its purposes of informing and teaching, but it also helps the author's ethos in a roundabout way. The book is meant to teach about deception, and personally, I had a thought ringing, "What if this book is ALSO tricking me in some way?" of course, the bluntness of the author's style had quickly dismissed the thought, as it was so simplistic, yet sophisticated, that I felt there was no possible way to interpret the text any differently that I had. Overall, I would say the optimal reader would have to be older due to the more dated references, but I think the author can still achieve his purpose.