Abstract
Thomas Stapleford of University of Notre Dame reviews “How Our Days Became Numbered: Risk and the Rise of the Statistical Individual”, by Dan Bouk. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Analyzes the history and impact of the quantification of life risk by the life insurance industry and the role of politics, racism, and social pressure in using and misusing these statistics. Discusses classing— paying attention to individual or group particularities; fatalizing—using past data to predict a group's future; writing—thinking statistically about individuals; smoothing—insurers' mathematical methods for minimizing the vagaries of life; a modern conception of death; valuing lives in four movements; failing the future; and numbering in layers. Bouk is Assistant Professor of History at Colgate University and a member of the Historicizing Big Data working group at the Max Planck Institute for History of Science in Berlin.”
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