Lying with Statistics

As the Antiplanner recently noted, rail and smart-growth advocates are fond of using touchy-feely arguments for their costly policies, and when presented with evidence that a preponderance of their projects are unquestionable failures, they simply respond that critics “lie with statistics.” The Antiplanner’s response is that you have to rely on data to figure out of policies are working or not, and if you are afraid someone is lying with statistics, you had best learn enough about data to watch for the signs of such lying.

Of course, an entire book was written on this subject way back in 1954. But here are a few ways of lying with statistics that Antiplanner readers should watch out for.

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