2 HISTORY AND INTRODUCTION Ch. 1 



term "statistics," although the name itself was coined many years 

 after Aristotle's death. 



For quite a long time after Aristotle a weak interest was main- 

 tained in descriptions of states partly by the intellectuals who enjoyed 

 that pastime and partly by the rulers of the various states through 

 their natural desire to know how many subjects they ruled, and to 

 ascertain the wealth within their realms. Hence it is probable that 

 some sort of crude census taking was attempted. 



During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries sufficient interest 

 was generated in the study of the political, sociological, and economic 

 features of states that societies developed for that purpose. In Ger- 

 many this line of intellectual effort caused the development of the 

 Staatenkunde, a name which appears to have led rather directly to 

 the actual coining of the term "statistics." However, the Germans 

 remained content to pursue the philosophical aspects of "matters of 

 state"; hence the Staatenkunde never did become either very mathe- 

 matical in character, or very useful. It merely typifies the last stages 

 of the purely philosophical phase of the development of the science 

 of statistical analysis, and points out its socio-political ancestry. 



Another, and more fruitful, step in the evolution of the present-day 

 type of statistical reasoning originated in England under the leader- 

 ship of John Graunt. This was a semi-mathematical study of vital 

 statistics, insurance, and economic statistics which came to be known 

 as "Political Arithmetic." Epidemic diseases periodically decimated 

 the populations of European nations; problems of agricultural pro- 

 duction, foreign trade, and public administration became too com- 

 plex to be handled without some form of numerical measurement and 

 an objective means of interpretation of such measurements. Hence 

 there was a natural interest in numbers of births and deaths, in esti- 

 mates of the populations in various areas, in figures on agricultural 

 production and foreign trade, and in methods for administering in- 

 surance against the economic situations created by death and dis- 

 ability. 



Public interest in specific measurements of populations and of re- 

 sources was heightened by the constant danger of war with a neigh- 

 boring state, and by the advent of an industrial revolution during 

 the eighteenth century. It was the objective of the political arith- 

 meticians to help with the collection and interpretation of data perti- 

 nent to the economic, sociological, and political problems which were 

 becoming increasingly important and numerous. They devised meth- 

 ods for estimating the numbers of persons residing in certain political 



