Statistician

“ The word 'statistics,' illustrating fixed and settled conditions, indicates the soundness of the German writer's thought and the true spirit in which the statistician should work.
The use of the statistical method in a scientific way is practically modern. In ancient times there were counts of the people, but no scientific use of the results that would warrant the application of the name statistics. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The statistician, possessing a wealth of information of a general nature, and from all parts of the world, and armed with fascinating complex mathematical instruments, is able to dissect the information at his disposal, and to reconstruct 176therefrom both facts and apparent facts of absorbing interest. To him we are indebted for the bulk of our knowledge of the distribution and spread of the influenza through metropolises, through countries, and through continents. ”

“ In order to form statistics properly so called the primary statistical quantities must be formed into tables, and in the formation of these tables lies the art of the statistician. It is not a very difficult art when the principles relating to it have been properly grasped, but those who are unfamiliar with the subject are apt to underrate the difficulty of correctly practising it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During development, it should be recognized that appropriate, statistically designed experiments will optimize the amount of information obtained. Therefore, consultation with a statistician about appropriately designed experiments will be of value during this phase of the research. ”

“ We developed our list of rules with researchers in mind: researchers having some knowledge of statistics, possibly with one or more statisticians available in their building, or possibly with a healthy do-it-yourself attitude and a handful of statistical packages on their laptops. ”

“ Statistical Methods Should Enable Data to Answer Scientific Questions A big difference between inexperienced users of statistics and expert statisticians appears as soon as they contemplate the uses of some data. While it is obvious that experiments generate data to answer scientific questions, inexperienced users of statistics tend to take for granted the link between data and scientific issues and, as a result, may jump directly to a technique based on data structure rather than scientific goal. ”

“ Such evidence for the establishment of facts as is satisfactory to the sociologist or psychologist or archeologist is scorned by the astronomer and the physicist, while the statistician is still more intolerant. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ In spite of the jugglery of figures in which the hearts of statisticians delight, what is the state of the country and its peasantry? Statistics are supposed to prove every theory advanced by men anxious to prove{61} their case, but our eyes are our best witnesses and can not deceive us. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Why should the fact of their employment in sociology be considered as authorizing the classification of the phenomena thus dealt with to form a new science ?
The most effective argument put forward by the advocates of this view is the assertion that statistics are merely a convenient aid to investigation in the majority of sciences, but are the sole method of inquiry in the case of sociology. When, indeed, it is tested by reference to the important class of social facts which are named economic, it becomes obvious that the argument breaks down. ”

“ In statistics, it is evident that empirical laws may sometimes be traced; and the tracing them forms an important part of that system of indirect observation on which we must often rely for the data of the Deductive Science. ”

“ Tinkering around with the data, also known as exploratory data analysis, is often the most informative part of the analysis. Exploratory plots can reveal data quality issues and outliers. Simple summaries, such as means, standard deviations, and quantiles, can help refine thinking and offer face validity checks for hypotheses. Many studies, especially when going in completely new scientific directions, are exploratory by design; the area may be too novel to include clear a priori hypotheses. Working with the data informally can help generate new hypotheses and ideas. ”

“ Provide Assessments of Variability Nearly all biological measurements, when repeated, exhibit substantial variation, and this creates uncertainty in the result of every calculation based on the data. A basic purpose of statistical analysis is to help assess uncertainty, often in the form of a standard error or confidence interval, and one of the great successes of statistical modeling and inference is that it can provide estimates of standard errors from the same data that produce estimates of the quantity of interest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One must not infer from the title that statistics in the scientific meaning of the term is an integral part of sociology, but that sociology, the general science of society needs to make use of statistical laws and conclusions just as it would the generalizations of political economy, of politics or of social ethics, in studying the organic development of society and in formulating a social synthesis. Population is the most important subject matter of statistical science, it is likewise a central fact in sociology. ”

“ The second inquiry through which we may learn somewhat of the present position of sociology relates to the development of method. Exact method in social research is statistical. Wherever we can obtain numerical data within the domain of social phenomena, there we arrive at exact or quantitative knowledge. The development and application of statistical methods to social problems has been one of the most striking scientific achievements of the present century. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ This class of statistics demands higher statistical qualifications, both in preparing for the enumeration and in the tabulation, classification and analysis of the results.
The third kind of statistics are those secured through a special investigation of certain representative facts. For instance if it is desired to learn the cost of producing iron and steel, it is not necessary, as in the previous case, to secure data for all the establishments engaged in such production. A few representative works offer ample information for determining cost of production. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The degree of exactitude attainable in industrial sciences may thus appear to be limited by the development of statistical inquiry. Since the collection of accurate statistics, even on those matters which are most important, and which lend themselves most easily to statistical description, is a modern acquirement which has not yet widely spread over the whole world, while the capacity for classifying and making right use of statistics is still rarer, it is held by some that in a study where so much depends upon accurate statements of quantity little advance is at present possible. ”