"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics" - Benjamin Disraeli

satan delights equally in statistics and in quoting scripture - HG Wells.

"Statistics can be completely misleading. If you take five six foot 10 inch foot giants and five four foot 10 inch dwarves, then the average height is five foot 10." Completely meaningless. As Irish humorist Des McHale once said, the average human has one breast and one testicle.

Statistics are worshipped and abused, whether it's in sport, business or economics.

Which is what interested me in this piece out of Wharton, The Use - and Misuse - of Statistics: How and Why Numbers Are So Easily Manipulated

According to the specialists, you have to look carefully at all the components and extraneous data. Trouble is it's easier to isolate this sort of data when you are dealing with scientific or medical material. Not so easy when it comes to forces like consumer and investor behavior.

The other problem is with data mining. If you pore through a large amount of data for long enough, you will always find a statistically significant effect or difference between some set of variables.
That doesn't make it significant.

What's critical when you look at any set of statistics is understanding how the data was obtained, whether it actually represents a random sample and taking into account the motivations of the people who were collecting it. Were they neutral parties? Who was paying them? And how much?