A WORD ON STATISTICS

IN A world where style and substance are constantly placed at odds with one another, statistics sometimes struggle to earn their proper due. They are a fundamental form of evidence rationality uses to argue its case and, while often contested, their ability to define a paradigm and aid analysis is immensely powerful, and under-appreciated or dismissed at one’s peril. It is true an over-reliance on quantitative information runs the risk of reducing human affairs to a cold, lifeless set of exchanges, but to focus exclusively on qualitative issues is to give preference to randomness and subjectivity. Perhaps more importantly, it is to ignore context and trends over time. That is the primary value of statistical comparison: it allows one to place an event in its proper perspective, and to differentiate the exception from the rule.

It’s no surprise, then, that societies with little appreciation for statistics show little appreciation for history, or the lessons to be learnt from it.

In turn, there can be implications for one’s moral code for, if every decision can justify itself, that is a slippery slope indeed and is to open the door to the abuse of power. Without context, best practice is reduced to a relative consideration — relative to nothing more than the attitude, nature, even position of the person responsible for it. Often quantitative analysis produces an answer not to the liking of those asking the question; attitudes are contemporary and those things that jar with them are a bitter pill to swallow. And yet there the pill sits, staring back at you. Nationalism detests statistics, because they allow “outsiders” to comment insightfully on those things it believes the sole preserve of “insiders’”. And so it guards them jealously, arguing their production is strictly state business. But the truth will out. History has far more patience than any government. Gareth van Onselen