Statistic

“ A very little human nature will upset a very great body of statistics. Furthermore, in most human affairs results are produced by a multiplicity of causes; and though statistics may throw light on three quarters of all the causes that are potent in any given case, yet the other quarter which are irreducible to definite statement may wholly alter the result. If you are using statistics in your argument, therefore, as evidence of some large and complex fact, you should usually justify them to some extent by showing that there are no counteracting forces which they do not cover. ”

“ 'Winwood Reade is good upon the subject,' said Holmes. 'He remarks that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says the statistician. ”

“ The attempt to make comparison between the percentage of growth of population and the percentage of growth in the expenditures of the Federal Government, using no facts relative to the great increase in mechanical production and of wealth, is a vicious use of statistical data. Such showings are the results of the work of the statistical mechanic, the man who constructs statistical tables to order.
Statistics really take the place of observation. ”

“ A central and common task for us as research investigators is to decipher what our data are able to say about the problems we are trying to solve. Statistics is a language constructed to assist this process, with probability as its grammar. While rudimentary conversations are possible without good command of the language (and are conducted routinely) , principled statistical analysis is critical in grappling with many subtle phenomena to ensure that nothing serious will be lost in translation and to increase the likelihood that your research findings will stand the test of time. ”

“ Statistics belong, like chronology, to the domain of the organic, to fluctuating Life, to Destiny and Incident and not to the world of laws and timeless causality. As everyone knows, statistics serve above all to characterize political and economic, that is, historical, developments. In the “classical” mechanics of Galileo and Newton there would have been no room for them. ”

“ Any experiment may be regarded as forming an individual of a “population” of experiments which might be performed under the same conditions. A series of experiments is a sample drawn from this population.
Now any series of experiments is only of value in so far as it enables us to form a judgment as to the statistical constants of the population to which the experiments belong. ”

“ The development of statistics is causing history to be rewritten. Till recently the historian studied nations in the aggregate, and gave us only the story of princes, dynasties, sieges, and battles. Of the people themselves—the great social body with life, growth, sources, elements, and laws of its own—he told us nothing. Now statistical inquiry leads him into the hovels, homes, workshops, mines, fields, prisons, hospitals, and all places where human nature displays its weakness and its strength. ”

“ The same thing has taken place with statistics, which, by the indefinite combination of its sources, succeeds now in throwing light, with a sufficient approximation, upon the movement of population in past centuries. ”

“ Constructing and filling out such tables as have been described, they can bring to light serious gaps in our numerical statistics, and they can thereby suggest and stimulate new statistical inquiries. Thus co-operating, the descriptive writers, the historians, and the statisticians can in time perfect our descriptive sociology, and, co-operating with those students who are completing the analysis of fundamental concepts, they can gradually give precision to our formulations of sociological law. ”

“ Now it happens that a great many investigations in descriptive sociology do not as yet admit of the introduction of exact statistical—that is, arithmetical—inquiries which, nevertheless, do admit the use of algebraically quantitative methods. ”

“ Only a large sample size makes it likely that our sample is close to representative of the population. For this reason, inferential statistics take into account the sample size when generalizing results from samples to populations. ”

“ Even the most refined statistics are nothing but an abstraction. But if that truth is held clearly before the mind, the polygons and curves of the statisticians can be used as a skeleton to which the imagination and our general sense of life give some flesh and blood reality. Human statistics are illuminating to those who know humanity. I would not trust a hermit's inferences about the statistics of anything. ”

“ He defines the statistical science as “die systematische Darlegung and Erdrterung der thatsächlichen Vorgänge and der aus diesen sich ergebenden Gesetze des gesellschaftlichen menschlichen Lebens auf Grundlage quantitativer Massenbeobachtungen” (the systematic statement and explanation of actual events, and of the laws of man's social life that may be deduced from these, on the basis of the quantitative observation of aggregates) . ”

“ As a department of political science, statistics is used to classify, arrange, and discuss facts relating to a part or the whole of a country or people, or facts relating to classes of individuals or interests in different countries, and especially those facts which illustrate the physical, social, moral, intellectual, political, industrial, and economical condition or changes of condition of the people, in so far as such conditions may be indicated through numerical and tabular statements. ”

“ X. I took the liberty of telling you last night that statistics are a mathematical form of telling a lie, and that, to use the expression of a clever Frenchman, a statistical table is like a loose woman who is at the service of anyone who wants her. ”

“ Every article on statistics requires at least one caveat. Here is ours: we refer in this article to “science” as a convenient shorthand for investigations using data to study questions of interest. This includes social science, engineering, digital humanities, finance, and so on. Statisticians are not shy about reminding administrators that statistical science has an impact on nearly every part of almost all organizations. ”

“ Statistics has thrown a flood of light upon important phases of societary life, such as the economic, where wage scales and price levels are significant concepts. Statistics has been widely utilized in the study of crime and poverty. The various methods of graphic presentations are valuable in interpreting tables of statistical data to the lay483 mind.
Statistical methods can be used, however, to prove almost anything. The ordinary individual is helpless when statistical methods are treated unscrupulously. ”

“ Statics, like sociology, studies the structure of society, but there is a wide difference between the methods employed respectively. Statistics investigates in the first instance statistical conditions, and phenomena of uniformity, whereas sociology is concerned particularly with the general direction in which human evolution is progressing. ”

“ The cultivation of statistics must be the source of all future improvement in the science of political economy, because it is to the table of the statistician that the economist must look for his facts ”

“ Ellis, late of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, has sought to show by a seemingly powerful array of statistics that the idea now under consideration is unfounded, but I consider that we have here only one more illustration of the familiar statement that you can prove anything you like by statistics. ”

“ The masses seem to be worth notice in three aspects only: first as the copies of great men, printed on bad paper from worn-out plates, next as a contrast to the great men, and lastly as their tools: for the rest, let the devil and statistics fly away with them! How could statistics prove that there are laws in history? ”

“ As becomes the orderly mind of a statistician, the society has been very regular in its publications, having for seventy years issued a yearly volume in quarterly parts, which form a veritable mine of statistical information. ”

“ It is a great step to know the mean fall of, say ten years, at any place in the United Kingdom; inductions may be drawn from this; by comparing results at different places; different theories may be evolved, or light thrown on some leading view. At all events, a body of statistics furnishes even an outside labourer with something on which to work. It is every one’s part who is at all interested in the study to contribute what he can of time and observation towards supplying additional facts on our rainfall. ”

“ The character of a population, also, and its social capacities are in a large measure statistically investigated. General intelligence is studied by means of statistics of literacy and illiteracy; industrial preferences by statistics of occupation; habits of industry by statistics of the number in every thousand of the total population who regularly follow gainful occupations ”

“ Vital statistics are, therefore, an indication of more than the mere health or even the material condition of a given population. Probably there are no social facts from which we may gather a clearer insight into the social conditions of a given population than vital statistics. ”

“ Every one who is engaged in statistical inquiry must acknowledge the possibility of natural laws governing such statistical facts. Hence we must allot a distinct place to numerical information relating to the numbers, ages, physical and sanitary condition, mortality, &c., of different peoples, in short, to vital statistics. ”

“ Why do we hear so much of the "approximate correctness" of so many statistical tables, when, in point of fact, the primary data are incapable of proof, and the averages and conclusions built upon them are all assumed? "Statisticians," says one of the fraternity, "are generally held to be eminently practical people; on the contrary, they are more given to theorizing than any other class of writers ”

“ Not only is this true, but the further interesting fact may be discovered that social statistics of every category employed or known are based upon a frank recognition of that coefficient of resemblance, physical or mental, which I have contended is a mark of social phenomena. The first step in statistical tabulation is classification, and classification invariably starts from an assumption of real or supposed resemblance. ”

“ Furthermore, it is important to bear in mind that the field for estimate in statistics of the kind proposed is limited; it only embraces figures for which exact totals are unobtainable, for instance, area, population, and figures of societies which refuse to give statistics, etc., and in every case precision in these statistics is not of vital importance. ”

“ All that is necessary to make the examples appropriate is that we should admit that in their case statistical data are our ultimate appeal in the present state of knowledge. Of course if the empirical laws can be resolved into their component causes we may appeal to direct deduction, and in this case the employment of statistics, and consequently the use of the theory of Probability, may be superseded. ”

“ It is true that statistical research can be called a scientific method of determining facts, and for studying various phenomena from which laws relating to life, production, distribution, consumption, etc., can be drawn ”

“ He uses the results of statistical inquiry because the method of obtaining and presenting them is scientific, and because he recognizes with the German Schlosser, that "statistics is history ever advancing," and that if he wishes to grow with advancing history and keep himself fully and thoroughly informed of progress in every direction, he must use the statistical or historical method ”

“ This chapter begins by discussing what statistics are and why the study of statistics is important. Subsequent sections cover a variety of topics all basic to the study of statistics. The only theme common to all of these sections is that they cover concepts and ideas important for other chapters in the book.
A. What are Statistics? ”

“ There is really no difference of opinion among statistical experts as to the subject-matter of statistics, the only question being - Shall statistics be termed a science as well as a method? That there are some investigations in which statistical procedure is employed which certainly do not belong to the domain of the supposed statistical science is generally admitted. But, as already shown, an attempt has been made to claim that the phenomena of human society, or some part of those phenomena, constitute the subject-matter of an independent statistical science. ”

“ On account, then, of the difficulties of the subject and of the profound importance of results which can be reached by no other known method, it is of the utmost consequence that the principles and processes of statistical mechanics should be put upon a firm and certain foundation. ”

“ For the information given, he alone is accountable; no contemporary statements having been referred to: except those relating to statistics, which are compiled from the best and most recent authorities, and are added to make the work more complete. ”

“ Statistics will not lie, but they will play wonderful tricks with a man who does not understand their dialect. The unsophisticated reader finds it difficult, when a column of statistics is offered to him, to resist the impression that they must prove something. The fact is that a column of statistics hardly ever proves anything. It is a popular opinion that anybody can use or understand statistics. ”