"Lies, damned lies, and statistics"

Given the eagerness with which it is quoted and re-quoted (often without attribution), there surely must be some truth to Benjamin Disraeli's complaint against that body of knowledge which takes as its subject the analysis of aggregates of information. (Perhaps this can be proven statistically!) 

Now I have no problems with the actual content of the discipline; on the contrary, I am deeply fascinated by the complexity and the power of statistics, even given how little I know, and am always interested in learning more about the field. Nevertheless, it seems true that human beings are simply not hard-wired to intuit probability and statistics; we would much rather deal in hard certainties than in fuzzy likelihoods. (Think about how easy it is to catch a ball, and about how complicated the actual physical model has to be to explain it!) This is perhaps why there is such blatant abuse of statistics everywhere, from tabloids to otherwise-respectable economic journals. Were this field of knowledge a living creature, tender-hearted defenders would have undoubtedly established numerous Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Statistics throughout the world by now.