Huff, Darrell, and Irving Geis. How to Lie with Statistics. New York: Norton, 1954.
Now, don't get me wrong, I am not saying that any of the recordcollections are lying. But it is very useful to understand howstatistics, and in the case of genealogical records, the numbers, can bemanipulated to show a specific results. Quoting numbers and statisticsis done every day by millions of news outlets, public relationsorganizations and even individuals and skewing the numbers for aparticular purpose is rampant in all of the media and especially on theInternet. In the genealogy world, online providers use their statisticsto show how large they are in relation to other providers. This tendencyis not limited to subscription or pay-as-you-copy services, but is ageneral tendency throughout the entire online world. I guess that thelarge numbers are supposed to impress potential users as to theusefulness of the database or for other motivational or advertisingpurposes.
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