Statistics is one of the most powerful forms of rhetoric in use today. Consumed by public, government and media alike, statistics can shape opinion and influence policy, informing (and misinforming) us of the world in which we live. From the medicines available, to the educational tests students take, to the cars we drive and other electronic goods we buy, statistics profoundly affects our everyday lives.
But statistics hasn't always had such an impact. Until the end of the 19th century statistics concerned itself with little more than the registration of births, deaths and marriages and census counts. It was only when Charles Darwin's ideas of biological variation and statistical populations became prominent that this was turned on its head, prompting mathematician Karl Pearson to inaugurate a statistical revolution.
Closely examining the vital statistics of the Victorians, including Florence Nightingale and Francis Galton, Eileen Magnello charts the development of statistics from antiquity to the present and shows that our faith is statistics is profoundly misplaced.
