Mark Twain on Statistics

In an attempt to ease my panic in the upcoming final exams in my statistics class, I’d like to put out something Mark Twain wrote in his “Chapters from My Autobiography”, published in 5 July 1907, in the North American Review:

“Figures often beguile me,” he wrote, “particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: ‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.'”

It didn’t work.