Definition of a Statistician: A man who believes figures don’t lie, but admits than under analysis some of them won’t stand up either.

Esar’s quip plays on the familiar maxim “figures don’t lie” by adding the statistician’s professional skepticism. On the surface, a statistician trusts numerical evidence more than rhetoric; yet the punchline concedes that numbers can collapse under scrutiny—because of bad sampling, biased assumptions, misleading aggregation, or inappropriate methods. The joke highlights a core idea in statistical thinking: data are not self-interpreting, and “analysis” can reveal that apparent precision masks uncertainty or error. It also gently satirizes the public’s tendency to treat quantified claims as automatically authoritative, reminding readers that credibility depends on how figures are produced and tested, not merely on their existence.