THE VALUE OF STATISTICS. 44 5 



THE VALUE OF STATISTICS. 



By Hon. CAEKOLL D. WEIGHT. 



THE German historian Schlosser has said that history is sta- 

 tistics ever advancing, and statistics is stationary history. 

 Looking beneath the words of Schlosser, one mnst conclude that 

 he means that the constant accumulation of statistical data from 

 period to period, or from epoch to epoch that is, statistics ever 

 in motion creates history, history being made up of the ever- 

 advancing events of life, which are shown through statistical 

 methods, but that statistics of one epoch constitutes the permanent 

 history thereof. The statistician, therefore, in the truest sense, 

 writes history, and he writes it in the most crystallized form 

 which can be adopted. He uses symbols, it is true, but with 

 them he unlocks the facts of his period, so that they may be made 

 plain to all students coming after him ; he tells the story of our 

 present state, that when the age we live in becomes the past, that 

 story shall be found to exist in true and just proportions. The 

 very word "statistics" indicates the soundness of the German 

 writer's thought. The word is from the French statistique from 

 the Greek statos, meaning fixed, settled ; statos being based on the 

 stem sta, meaning to stand. Statistics, then, is used to illustrate 

 fixed and settled conditions. 



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, indus- 

 trial, and economical condition or changes of condition of the 

 people, in so far as such conditions may be indicated through 

 numerical and tabular statements. 



It is not a matter of much consequence whether statistics is 

 a science or a method. English writers on statistics generally 

 consider that it constitutes a method. Continental writers more 

 generally insist upon its being denominated a science. The 

 American opinion follows that of the Continent. It is true that 

 statistical research can be called a scientific method of determin- 

 ing facts, and for studying various phenomena from which laws 

 relating to life, production, distribution, consumption, etc., can be 

 drawn ; and the method must be considered scientific, because by 

 it facts can be clearly stated, classified, and analyzed, elements 

 which make science. We speak of the science of botany, because, 

 for one reason, all the facts relating to botany can be classified ; 

 and so as to other departments of knowledge, classification or the 

 lack of it determining the scientific or unscientific character* of 



