POWELL] SOCIOLOGY LXIII 



erally applied. All intelligent action in business enterprise is 

 dependent largely on accnrate statistical information. This 

 function of statistics . we will designate as the function of 

 information. 



Statistics are compared for difterent conditions to exhibit 

 important relations of social life as causes of good or evil 

 effects. The comparison is made of numbers taken at different 

 periods iu the history of a people for the purpose of exhibiting 

 the evolution of social conditions. This leads us to the con- 

 sideration of statistics in veriiication. 



So common is this use that it would not be a bad definition 

 to say that statistics is the science of the verification of soci- 

 ologic inferences. The statesman, whose vocation is the study 

 of jii-actical government, deals largely with statistics, and the 

 sociologist, whose theme is the social structure and its func- 

 tions, resorts to statistics for the verification of his doctrine. 

 In this use of statistics the greatest care is necessary in order 

 that unsound doctrines niay not recei^•e apparent confirmation. 



We may assume that kinds are properly discriminated, that 

 measures are reasonably accurate, that enumerations are well 

 taken, and that comparisons ai-e wisely made. There yet 

 remains a large field in the use of figures in verification in 

 which they may be perverted to the sustaining of fallacies. 

 This is the field in which they are habitually vised to verify 

 theories of social evolution. Perhaps the most potent sources 

 of such fallacies are the use of figures for comparatively short 

 periods of time which do not admit of the elimination of 

 transient causes, and the proneness of men to look at causes 

 in the interest of j^arties, sects, and social classes, and to 

 impute false causes to such social conditions as they may 

 lament or admire. 



This brief discussion will perhaps suffice to set forth the 

 elements of statistics, which must be considered as integral 

 parts of the science. To understand statistics it is necessary 

 to understand the science of kind, the science of measure- 

 ment, the science of enumeration, the science of comparison, 

 and the science of verification, as they are rej^resented in the 

 science of statistics. 



