It is curious that so many people are accepting of statistics despite Disraeli's famous aphorism concerning "three kinds of lies." This acceptance certainly seems to hold for education statistics, especially when they imply something negative about American public schools. Sometimes people accept statistics because they are not in a position to challenge them, although this is far less true today, thanks to a variety of online research tools. Other times--and this is especially true for harried principals--people accept them because they lack the time to ferret out the truth. In the hope of giving non-researchers a time-saving tool with which to approach statistics with both skepticism and wisdom, the author has identified what he calls his Principles of Data Interpretation: (1) Question statistics that, while accurate enough, do not tell the whole story; (2) Beware of mutant statistics; (3) Make certain the rhetoric and the numbers match; (4) When comparing groups, make sure the groups are comparable; (5) Watch out for Simpson's Paradox; and (6) Do the arithmetic.