Thoughts on the value and significance of statistics / by Daniel Noble.

  • Daniel Noble
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thoughts on the value and significance of statistics / by Daniel Noble. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    if none at all, then these and all others similarly circumstanced can have but little value, and no scientific significance -whatever. But in those cases wherein we can obtain a reliable body of facts numerically arranged with due regard to identity in the separate groupings, and rightly classified with a view to comparison, statistics have great value and much significance. I do not believe that in any instance they are of themselves competent to the definite settlement of a doubtful matter, notwithstanding the frequency of such language as that this or that proposition can be proved by statistics. My own conception of their ofiQce is, that they are suggestive, auxiliary, and corroborative, but not probative. Thus I would say that, when rightly constructed and handled, they may suggest a course of inquiry, or aid in the establishment of a con- clusion, or supply corroborative evidence in favour of an inference arrived at by other processes of inquiry; and, again, that they may throw such additional uncertainty upon a proposition already ques- tionable as to exhibit the necessity for other and closer researches. The history of statistics will furnish many instances of what I now say. A few illustrations of their successful use, and also of their abuse, will both serve to bring out and to exemplify my meaning. Numbered facts rightly suggested, some years ago, that there was some connection between ill-health and an atmosphere vitiated by the decomposition of animal matters; but they did not prove—as by misinterpretation was for some time thought—that the noxious agency was the existing cause of all fevers. Yet they gave impulse and direction to extended and more intimate investigation; and this produced results, corroborated by other statistics, which have brought us much nearer to the truth of this matter. Many years ago, it was a widely-entertained opinion that prices were all but exclusively governed by the amount of coin and bank notes in circulation ; and it was accordingly thought that the Bank of England, by arbitrary issues of paper, could almost at its pleasure elevate and depress the price of corn and other commodites.
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