Section F. 



ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL SCIENCE AND 

 STATISTICS. 



President of the Section 

 R. TEECE, F.I.A. 



1.— INTERNATIONAL STATISTICAL COM- 

 PARISONS. 



By ROBERT GIFFEN, C.B., LL.D. 



An old jest runs to the effect that there are three degrees of 

 comparison among liars. There are liars, there are outrageous 

 liars, and there ai'e scientiKc exj^erts. This has lately been 

 adapted to throw dirt upon statistics. There are three degrees 

 of comparison, it is said, in lying. There are lies, there are out- 

 rageous lies, and there are statistics. Statisticians can afford to 

 laugh at and profit by jests at their expense. There is so much 

 knowledge which is unattainable except by statistics, especially 

 the knowledge of the condition and growth of communities in 

 the mass, that even if the blunders in using statistics were 

 greater and more frequent than they are, the study would still 

 be indispensable. But just because we can afford to laugh at 

 such jests we should be ready to turn them to account, and it is 

 not difficult to discover one of the principal occasions for the 

 jest I have quoted, and prolit by the lesson. 



Statistics are easily mishandled, for the simple reason, amongst 

 others, that people like short cuts, and they are apt to take 

 different figures and compare them with each other, because 

 the things i-epresented by them are called by the same names, 

 without any consideration of the question how the figures are 

 obtained, and whether the things compared ai'e throughout of 

 a like kind. Thus two states will be compared with each other 

 as regards their revenue for Imperial purposes, without any 

 consideration of the fact that in the one certain expenses of 

 government are borne on the Imperial budget, which in the 

 other are borne on the local budget, or perhaps left to private 

 agency ; or without any consideration of such a fact as the 

 inclusion in the one budget of loans or the proceeds of the sales 

 of public property as revenue, which in the other are excluded 

 altogether, or specially dealt with. The statistics, however, are 

 not lies in themselves ; it is only in the handling of them that 

 the lying takes place. T have thought it would be of interest, 

 therefore, in a meeting like this, to raise explicitly for discussion 

 some of the principal dangers in the handling of statistics to 



