"There are three kinds of lies : lies, damned or white lies and statistics"- explain?
1 Answer
Jul 11, 2018
The phrase was attributed in Mark Twain's autobiography to Benjamin Disraeli, a British Prime Minister in the 1800s. Twain was also responsible for the widespread use of the phrase, although it may have been used much earlier by Sir Charles Dilke and others.
In essence, the phrase sarcastically expresses doubt of statistical evidence by comparing it to lies, suggesting that it is often misleadingly altered or used out of context. For the purposes of this phrase, 'statistics' is used to mean 'data.'
