September 3, 2012

Smoking statistics

Andrew Gelman, of Columbia University, wrote an article a few months ago called “Statistics for Cigarette Sellers”

Remember How to Lie with Statistics? It turns out the  author worked for the cigarette companies… It appears he was also working on a book in the late 1960s called How to Lie with Smoking Statistics, which the publisher saw “high likelihood of proceeding into print.”

His blog has a largely overlapping post, but with a bit more material (and discussion in comments).

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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »