Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/601

* STATISTICS. 515 STATIUS. statement in some numerical form, as a percent- age, an average, or a series of figures showing the distribution of the characteristic among the members of the group. This indicates a funda- mental reason for the imperfect development of methods of measurement in the social sciences and a reason that statistics or the science of measuring aggregates of units, as distinct from individual units, is more necessary and lias a wider range of applications in the study of social sciences than it has in the study of natural sci- ences. There is, therefore, nnich ground for the opinion of those who define stati.stics as the nu- merical study of social facts, or the numeri- cal investigation of man's social life. But it seems more correct to hold that, for example, an enumeration through the century of the num- ber of auroras observed each year and an obser- vation through the same period of the extent of spots on the sun, and an arrangement of these two measurements in such a way as to show that they hae fluctuated in close conformity, is to be included in statistics. Theory. The United States Census reported in 1800 22,329,990 persons in the country over 15 years of age and married; in 1900 this class of the population numbered 27,705,707. On computing the ratios it is found that among each 1000 adults 553 were married in 1890 and 557 in 1900. The same authority reported at the Eleventh Census 875.521 deaths during the pre- ceding year, of which G756 were caused by rail- road accidents, and at the Twelfth Census 1,039,- 094 deaths, of which 0930 were due to the samo cause, so that r.ailroad accidents caused in 1890 057 deaths and in 1900 607 deaths out of each 100,000 reported. The foregoing will serve to illustrate a regularity or uniformity often, but not always, traceable in the distribution of con- ditions or the recurrence of events in society. Upon this uniformity in the characteristics of, and this regularity in the events occurring in, so- cial groups, which has been not very felicitously called 'the law of large numbers,' the statistical method rests. These uniformities and regulari- ties do not exist in the individual or even in the small group, and if they could not be traced in the large group the laborious and uninviting statistical method would add nothing to the in- formation obtainable from examination of a few individuals or instances, and therefore, however iiiipnitant for political ends, would have no sig- nificance for science. It is this 'law of large numbers,' or the permanence of numerical rela- tions in social life, that nial<es it possible to de- scribe human societies with accuracy in quantita- tive terms, to frame inductions from their past, which are found to hold for their future, to fore- cast the influence of a given change upon their life and so in multitudinous ways to control that life. Perhaps the best illustration of the im- portance of the 'law of large numbers' is found in the business of insurance, which could not exist were it not for that law as a foundation. This principle stands in somewhat the same rela- tion to the possibility of a science of society that the principle of the uniformity of nature does to the possibility of natural science. In social phe- nomena it is seldom if ever possible to carry the isolation of causes to the degree of perfection it has reached in the natural world. The presence of a few drops of hydrochloric acid is practically the only difference between a transparent solu- tion of nitrate of silver and a turbid white fluid, so the acid is said to cause the precipitate. But the marriage of an imiividual man or woman is influenced by so many complex considerations that it is impossible to perceive in the vast ma- jority of marriages taken separately any ellect of so subsidiary a cause as the price of bread or the sjiread of business dejiression. 'hat this subsidiary cause loses, however, in power over each individual instance it gains by the number of individuals it reaches and the fact that its efl'ect is uniformly in the same direction, while the influence of age, of example, of personal af- fection, of gain or loss of property, etc., though in many individual cases far more powerful, is felt sometinjes in one direction and sometimes in another. Such causes, therefore, are as power- less on the aggregate as they are potent on the individual, and, on the contrarj', the society as a whole betra3's the undeniable ('H'ects of slight causes, which perhaps few individuals therein would admit to have swayed their action. The 'law of large numbers' thus assumes that the causes of any social phenomenon may be divided into two groups, the individual, accidental, or disturbing causes, and the essential or pri- niaiy causes, and that causes of the former sort have no constant tendencj' to act in one direc- tion rather than another, and, accordingly, no tendency to move the group as a whole in any one direction. If a suflicicntly large number of instances be taken, the disturbing or individual causes cancel and allow the influence of the essen- tial or group causes to be traced. How large a number of instances must be enumerated to elim- inate these individual causes with any specified degree of completeness is a mathematical prob- lem dealt with by the calculus of probabilities. Bibliography. For the only survey of the his- tory in English, see Falkner's translation of Meit- zen's (Jeschichte, Theorie and Tcchnik der Statis- tik, published by the American .cademy of Po- litical and Social Science in 1891. For the theory of the subject, see the latter part of the foregoing book; Bowley, Elements of Sialisties (London, 1901), strong in English methods, in wage statis- tics, and in the mathematical basis of the subject ; and Westergaard, Theorie der Htatistik (Jena, 1890). See also Mayo-Smith, ^tatislies and So- ciology and Statistics and Economics. STATIUS, sta'shi-us, Publuls Papinius (e.40-c.90 A.D.). A Roman poet, born at Naples. He became famous for his poetic gifts, espe- cially for his skill in extemporaneous verse, and three times gained the prize in the Alhan con- tests. But finally, having been vanquished in the quinquennial games, he retired with his wife, Claudia, to his birthplace, Naples, where he died about A.D. 96. He is polished and correct, but one often feels the note of artificiality in his verse. He wrote a very dull and laborious epic entitled • Thebais; the Silvw, five books of miscellaneous poems; and an epic of the Trojan cycle, Achil- leis, of which only a portion has survived. The best modern editions are: of the Silva; by Baehrens (Leipzig, 1876). Vollmer (with e.x- tensive German commentary, Leipzig, 1898), and Klotz (Leipzig, 1900); of the AchiUeis and Thehais, by Kolilmann (Leipzig, 1879). There are English translations, in whole or in part, by Pope, Howard, Stephens, and Lewis.