Statistics And Truth

Limited to 500 copies. In the late 80s, King's X had just launched their now-iconic Sam Taylor-produced debut album Out of the Silent Planet (1988), ushering in what would soon become known as the “Houston sound.” This sound was a unique blend of progressive metal, groove, rock, and rich harmonies. Around the same time, another band began making waves: The Awful Truth. They had recorded their debut album for mainstream Metal Blade Records but sadly broke up before it even came out. By the time the album was released in 1989, two-thirds of The Awful Truth had formed a new band with two other members, the now-legendary Galactic Cowboys, further defining that groovy-metallic Houston Sound. Although signed to the infamous Metal Blade Records (known for releasing albums by Slayer, Fates Warning, Voivod, etc.), The Awful Truth's eponymous album featured poetic lyrics expressing a sincere faith. A key example is “Ghost of Heaven”:

We contend that statistics are not a type of lie, but rather, when used carefully, are an alternative to lying. For this reason, we use "or" in the title of this book, where Twain/Disraeli used "and," to underline how we are thinking of statistics, correctly applied, as standing in opposition to lies and damned lies. But why use such a complicated method of telling the truth as statistics, rather than, say, telling a good story or painting a moving picture? The answer, we believe, is simply that there are many concrete, specific questions that humans have about the world which are best answered by carefully collecting some data and using a modest amount of mathematics and a fair bit of logic to analyze them. The thing about the Scientific Method is that it just seems to work. So why not learn how to use it?