Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/462

 446 the knowledge. Science demands a classification of facts so rigid that all men will consent to its integrity and to its use.

Whether statistics is a science or a scientific method, its use is sometimes empirical, deceptive, and illusory, and even dishonest; and because of these things the method is often condemned. We frequently hear it said that nothing is so uncertain as figures, and many writers contend that no thorough dependence can be placed upon statistical data. One long engaged in statistical work feels more and more keenly, as the results of original investigation, not only the limitations of statistics, but the fact that perfectly honest and truthful statistical tables may not only be vicious in themselves, but may also lead to the most worthless conclusions, the tables themselves not indicating, and it not being possible to fully indicate by them, the exact truth they contain. The method, I believe, is the surest for ascertaining conditions, and the truest on which to base conclusions; but the method must be supplemented by full and frank analysis. A statistical table, independent of such analysis, is to me what a red flag is to a bull. It immediately excites antagonism and invites attack. The value of any statistical presentation must depend upon the basis upon which it is made, the integrity of the collection of the various elements of it, and the analysis which accompanies it. No one has any right to quote statistical tables without using and understanding the analysis of them. It is because of the flippant and careless use of statistics by writers and speakers that it receives their condemnation. No one thinks, however, of condemning anæsthetics because the burglar chloroforms his victim; or the elementary rules of arithmetic, the means by which all honest accounts are kept, simply because dishonest accounts are made possible by the same means; yet I know that, because so many instances of the lying use of honest statistics meet one's observation, it is not remarkable that there are so many surprising denunciations of the method, and that we hear the oft-repeated statement that anything can be proved by statistics—a statement usually made for the purpose of belittling the importance and value of the method under discussion. It is perfectly true that one so disposed can, by dropping an essential element of a table, show the exact reverse of the truth, or, by a combination of truthful elements, prove an untruth; just as the foolish man thought he could prove by the Bible that there was no God, by quoting the exact language of the Psalms in the statement "There is no God," the whole statement being, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." Such a use of statistics belongs to the theorist, who cares more for his idea than for the truth; who cares more for his view of the conditions of life than for the historical fact. Statistics is as dangerous in the hands of such a person as it is in the hands