80 



Tran&ac t ions . —Mi see i Icmeous . 



Abt. VI. — Note on the Veracity of the Returns of Age in the 



Cens^Ls of 1901. 



By H. W. Segar, M.A., Professor of Mathematics, Univer- 

 sity College, Auckland. 



[Read before the Auckland Institute, 6th July, 1903.'} 

 Plates IV. and V. 



The statistics of the ages of the people afforded by census 

 returns are marred by an element of uncertainty due to the 

 ignorance, carelessness, and wilful misrepresentation of indi- 

 viduals. A person ignorant of his own age, ignorant of and 

 careless in ascertaining the ages of members of his household, 

 or wilfully misrepresenting the age of himself or the ages of 

 others, is very apt to choose numbers ending in or 5. Many, 

 for instance, knowing an age to be about 40, will put it 

 down in a round number as 40 without further bother. The 

 result is that in census returns generally we find a greater 

 number of people returned as being of such ages than is con- 

 sistent with the numbers returned for neiglibouring ages, as is 

 shown in the following table : — 



Table I.— Number 



OF People returned at certain Ages in New 

 Zealand Census, 1896. 



Here the numbers recorded as being of ages 40, 45, 50, and 



55 are evidently in excess of what should be. 



The numbers ending in are more patronised than those 

 ending in 5. Also, numbers ending in 2 and in 8 are favour- 

 ites in the same way, but to a much less extent. The result 

 is that at these ages, and especially at those which are 

 multiples of 10, we have clusters, as it were, of population 

 in the census returns of ages, and corresponding deficiencies 

 in the other ages. Now, as a matter of fact, in all popula- 

 tions that have not been subject to some very remarkable 

 and unusual event that would tend to increase or diminish 



