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Words alone don’t tell a story. A writer organizes words into sentences and organizes the sentences into a story line. If the words are badly organized, the story isn’t clear. Data also need organizing if they are to tell a clear story. Too many words obscure a subject rather than illuminate it. Vast amounts of data are even harder to digest—we often need a brief summary to highlight essential facts. How to organize, summarize, and present data are our topics in the second part of this book.

Organizing and summarizing a large body of facts opens the door to distortions, both unintentional and deliberate. This is no less (but also no more) the case when the facts take the form of numbers rather than words. We will point out some of the traps that data presentations can set for the unwary. Those who picture statistics as primarily a piece of the liar’s art concentrate on the part of statistics that deals with summarizing and presenting data. We claim that misleading summaries and selective presentations go back to that after-the-apple conversation among Adam, Eve, and God. Don’t blame statistics. Do remember the saying “Figures won’t lie, but liars will figure,” and beware.