I want to thank everyone who answered my question - I am amazed by how
many lurking TIPsters are out there.
Here is an irony: My email went down about 5 minutes after I posted the
question (this rarely happens - the server here is pretty reliable) - so I
went into class and (cautiously) attributed the quote to Mark Twain...
Apparently, that is (mostly) incorrect - the flood of responses to my
message suggest that the correct answer is Disraeli.
But, I did want to share on of the private posts with the list (I hope
this is OK with Maxwell....). Despite the near unanimous shout of
"DISRAELI" from the list, it looks like we may have another "horses teeth"
quote on our hands!
-- Jim
<begin forwarded message....>
>Here's a previous discussion, however it's no more conclusive...
>From Chance News 6 Feb 1993
>Someone asked me recently if the famous quote "Lies damned lies and
>statistics" should be attributed to Mark Twain or Disraeli. It appears
>regularly in news articles so I looked there. Alas, about half of they
>time it was attributed to Mark Twain and half of the time to Disraeli.
>One article said that Mark Twain attributed it to Disraeli in his
>autobiograpy. I verified this and assumed that I had settled the
>problem.
>However, Hal Stern pointed out to me that this was not so. It appears
>that a John Bibby made a much more thorough study of the problem and
>concluded that "there must be considerable doubt about the saying's
>parenthood. "In the process he wrote a wonderful little book of
>statistical quotes: "Quotes, damned quotes and..." available from
>John Bibby (Books)
>29 Liberton Brae
>Edinburgh EH16 6AG
>Scotland
