Statistics, Then an Now

Abstract

I learned of the year 1839 very early in life. It was the year of my father's birth. He was not a statistician but a student of the Greek and Latin classics, and my schooling like that of most of my contemporaries who were fitting for college was chiefly classical. There was GCreek and Latin, arithmetic, algebra and geometry, and a modern language but no science. first data I read in the preschool days were in the margins of the Bible. creation was in 4004 B.C., already in the agricultural age. ancient Jewish historian had not heard of the pre-agricultural ages, but he may have been no worse off than the chronologist Bishop Ussher (Usher) of 1581-1656 whose biblical chronology was published shortly before his death. cosmogonists are always giving us dates for future cosmogonists to revise. Then there was the universal flood that destroyed all animal life except for the inhabitants of Noah's ark in 2349 B. C., an event of which are far from certain, albeit sure it did not occur at that time. And Joseph weint down into Egypt in 1729 and, being a smart fellow, was well received only to have his whole tribe driven out in the exodus of 1460. By this date the chronologist may perhaps be not more than 250 years off. There are the more recent statistical estimates by our best demographers which turned out none too accurate. Sometime around 1937 that great planner, President Roosevelt, asked his National Resources Committee to forecast our population to 1980 so plans could be made for taking care of it. best demographers were then Thompson and Whelpton of the Scripps Foundation for Research in In great detail, as was desired, they made 7 forecasts on seven different sets of hypotheses assuming the past characteristics of the population known up to 1935, leading by extrapolation to the 7 distributions they found. Leaving out the detail of age distribution, I give only the totals for the whole United States. actual census figures for 1940, 1950, 1960, to the nearest million are 132, 151 179. forecast for 1940 was naturally about right. For 1950 the 7 forecasts varied from 136 to 144 with the census at 151 well above the highest. For 1960 the 7 forecasts were from 137 to 155, but 179 was the census figure, and this was above the highest estimate for 1980, which was 174. details can be found in the first chapter of that 305 page quarto Government monograph The Problems of a Changing Population. significance of the participial adjective Changing was that, relatively speaking, children were to be fewer and old folks more plentiful than in the past. Well, the adjective was right, the age distribution changed. Not long ago I received from Health, Education and Welfare an advertisement for their Trends in which they, too, gave population forecasts probably by able demographers of the present generation. For 1980 there are 4 in number, varying from 231 to 273. Possibly this sort of statistical work can be done better now than 37 years ago. increase from 179 in 1960 lies between 52 and 94 which allows a variation of 29% to 54% during the 20 years 1960 to 1980; whereas Thompson and Whelpton basing on 1935 at 127 allowed only a variation of 8% to 22% for the 25 years from 1935 to 1960. HEW forecasters are clearly far more cautious, much nearer to saying we can't forecast. By 1980 Changing may still be a good adjective-enough room has been allowed to make quite a difference-but what the 1980 figure will be do not know.