Resumen del libro

Reseña: Based around a number of illustrative case studies, this book charts the development of our modern day reliance on statistics. Topics covered include scientific innovations, administrative issues and the use of numbers in politics. By looking at these aspects of statistics together, the authors are able to present a truly original work - one that provides an international perspective on the rhetoric of numbers.

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indice: Introduction 1 Percentages and the Foundation of Statistical Objectivism 2 Robert Gourlay and the Tradition of the Statistical Account 3 Adolphe Quetelet, Polymath of Nineteenth-Century European Statistics 4 Politics and Statistics of Population in Turn-of-the-Century America 5 The Epitaph of Imperial Statistics 6 Statistical Expertise and the Twilight of Liberal Italy 7 Form as Content: Setting up the Nation's Central Thinking Office 8 Selection, Representation and the Politics of Sampling

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