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XIV.

ON INTERNATIONAL STATISTICAL COMPARISONS. 1
•
N old jest runs to the effect that there are three
A degrees of comparison among liars. There are
liars, there are outrageous liars, and there are scientific
experts. This has lately been adapted to throw dirt
upon statistics. There are three degrees of comparison,
it is said, in lying. There are lies, there are outrageous
lies, and there are statistics. Statisticians can afford to
laugh at and profit by jests at their expense. There is
so much knowledge which is unattainable except by
statistics, especially the knowledge of the condition
and growth of communities in the mass, that, even if the
blunders in using statistics were greater and more fre-
quent than they are, the study would still beindispens-
able. But just because we can afford to laugh at such
jests we should be ready to turn them to account, and
it is not difficult to discover one of the principal occa-
sions for the jest I have quoted, and profit by the lesson.
Statistics are easily mishandled. for the simple reason.
amongst others, that people like short cuts, and they
are apt to take different figures and compare them
with each other, because the things represented by
them are called by the same names, without any con-
sideration of the question how the figures are obtained,
and whether the things compared are throughout of a
like kind. Thus two states will be compared with each
other as regards their revenue for Imperial purposes,

I Paper read at the meeting of the Australasian Association for the
Advancement of Science at Hobart, January, 1892. Reprinted in
II Economic Journal" for that year.
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