Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/111

Rh facts relating to botany can be classified, and so, as to other departments of human knowledge, classification or the lack of it may determine the scientific character of the knowledge. Science demands a classification of facts so rigid that all men will consent to its use and to the conclusions to which it may point.

Notwithstanding statistics is a science or a scientific method, its. use is often empirical, deceptive, illusory and dishonest, and because of these things the method itself is often condemned. No one thinks, however, of condemning anæsthetics because the burglar chloroforms his victim, or the elementary features of arithmetic, the means by which all honest accounts are kept, simply because dishonest accounts are made possible by the same means. So many instances of the lying use of honest statistics meet one's observation that it is not remarkable that many make surprising denunciation of statistics and the assertion that anything can be proved by it is made to belittle the importance and value of the method.

It is true that one so disposed can, by dropping an essential element of a table, show the exact reverse of the truth, just as the foolish man said he could prove by the Bible itself there was no God, referring to the statement 'there is no God,' leaving out part of the whole statement, which is 'The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.' So writers and speakers who have a particular economic theory to sustain will drop out of the statistical presentation of the facts the elements which work against them, using the others as the whole truth. This is seen very often in political speeches. The attempt to make comparison between the percentage of growth of population and the percentage of growth in the expenditures of the Federal Government, using no facts relative to the great increase in mechanical production and of wealth, is a vicious use of statistical data. Such showings are the results of the work of the statistical mechanic, the man who constructs statistical tables to order.

Statistics really take the place of observation. The latter is not trustworthy. Enumerations, counts, or records of continuous events are essential to establish accurate knowledge. But statistical science in this direction differs from the exact sciences. A few experiments may establish the fact that water freezes at a certain point or that the intermingling of two chemical agents will produce certain results, and the conclusion is that the same results will always be secured when the same elements are brought in contact; but the phenomena of life conditions and productions may not so easily be ascertained. Statistical work is full of fallacious details. Fallacies are found in the ordinary practice of striking averages. These things add to the disturbing influences resulting from any great enumeration, to perplexing differences among international trade accounts and to miscalculation by individual inquirers.