Wallace Ferguson has taught mathematics and statistics at Chatham and Clarendon Grammar School, Kent, England since 1994. He writes book reviews for the Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications, which are published in their journal, ‘Mathematics Today’. His interests include statistical etymology and his article ‘Microscopium statisticum and the etymology of statistics’ was published in the February edition of Significance. Ferguson is currently working on a follow on article, ‘Literature, Politics and the Framing of the State, 1300 – 1648’. He was a member of The Royal Statistical Society History of Statistics committee from 2018 until this year.
Episode Description
In the late 1600s, a book was published satirizing politics in Europe. Published two decades after the end of the 30 Years’ War, it focuses on the power of the Holy Roman Empire. That book’s impact on statistics is the focus of this episode of stats and stories, with guest Wallace Ferguson.
+Full Transcript
Rosemary Pennington
In the late 1600s, a book was published satirizing politics in Europe, published two decades after the end of the 30 Years War. It focuses on the power of the Holy Roman Emperor. That book's impact on statistics is the focus of this episode of Stats and Stories, where we explore the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics. I'm Rosemary Pennington. Stats and Stories is a production of Miami University's Department of Statistics and Media, Journalism and Film, as well as the American Statistical Association. Joining me is regular panelist, John Bailer, emeritus professor of statistics at Miami University. Our guest today is Wallace Ferguson. Ferguson is a teacher at Chatham and Clarendon Grammar School, where he's taught math and stats and Kent, England since 1994. He writes book reviews for the Institute of mathematics and its applications, which are published in their journal mathematics today. His research interests include statistical etymology, he's here today to talk about his article microscope, Ium, status disome and the etymology of statistics, which was published in the February edition of Significance magazine. Wallace, thank you so much for joining us today.
Wallace Ferguson
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
Rosemary Pennington
What is so interesting about this book?
Wallace Ferguson
I think the thing that really interests me is its effect on the name of statistics, the etymology of statistics. I collect antiquarian books also. And I've always been very interested in the background to statistics, having taught it for many years. But often the question would come up in a classroom as to the origin of statistics. I struck it lucky, looking through one of the regular book dealers websites, when I saw this book advertised, and that has raised my interest further. So I went up to London to try and get it. But I didn't make a good choice of the day, because it was raining, the train was actually packed, and the whole of London was packed with anti-Brexit demonstrations.
Rosemary Pennington
Well, it seems right though, if you're going to buy a book about politics and statistics.
Wallace Ferguson
That's right, that was carried out in action. But unfortunately, I couldn't get to the book dealer. So I came back a few days afterwards, and it was successful. So partly, in getting the book as well, it was trying to track down a range of different issues, like, where exactly is the book placed in the 17th century? What's the book actually about? What strands of statistics are relevant to the theory behind the book, also, these were issues that I took on board and worked with more, particularly in reference, when I looked at research of how people had used microscopes, Ium, statistical. Many people, many writers had mentioned the title, and give it credit, as one of the originators of the name for statistics. But there were no translations of it. There was no real explanation of the background to it. So that was the first real challenge. One of the drawbacks was that it was almost entirely in Latin, with some part German as well. geometry, the old Fraktur Gothic script, yeah, that might be a problem. It was a problem. So I studied Latin at school, but I paid for the trans translation of a chunk of it. And that that helped to to get a better idea about the background behind it.
John Bailer
So I love how you've even organized the way you're describing it, you kind of gave me notes for how to proceed with the episode. So thanks for that. So, you know, I want to talk about those issues, you know, this context of placing it in the 17th century, perhaps sort of what was going on in the world at the time when this was written? And what kind of led to this and then we'll follow up with the other questions after you react to that?
Wallace Ferguson
Yes, it was quite a difficult time in Germany, Germany had just had this book published in 1672 and 24 years after the end of the 30 years war that began in 1618. So it was a very difficult time. In Germany, people recovering from war and massive destruction in Germany in particular bore the brunt of the fighting and action in the 30 Years War is quite similar to the ending they are to 1945 in Germany a very comparable set. creation. Also at the time, as well, there's quite a degree of change of transition between the first half of the 17th century and the second half, particularly with the advent of scientific societies like the Royal Society, and moving on a sense from religious control over science, partly in the first half the tension between religion and science between new philosophy and old philosophy as well as seen by Francis Bacon, there's a lot happening at that time. Also, the idea of what the state is and the impact of the post Westphalian settlement and 1648 that often is credited with the modern concept of the states.
Rosemary Pennington
So what is this book? What is it? What is the argument it's making? Or what is it doing? And how does that tie into statistics? Or does that or is it just the name?
Wallace Ferguson
It's just mainly the name, Rosemary?
Rosemary Pennington
Well, that's a short, short question.
John Bailer
So it's just it's just embedded in the name. So you know, you describe this in, you know, as a satirical theoretical treatise on politics. And all of those words appealed to me, but I didn't think of them ever being together. So, can you help deconstruct that with us? You know, what, what is, you know, when you say it's, what was this, the satirical aspect of it?
Wallace Ferguson
They are given credit in the sales literature in the 1974 social sciences encyclopedia that gives reference to the satirical parts. And at the time, there was a strong tradition of SATA, against the Holy Roman Empire, that was instrumental, partly in the war, and post the war. Also, with the translation that I've got about 2030 pages, the satirical part doesn't come off strongly at all, really, but they've put a lot of time in. And it changed very much with what happened in the late 1580s, right through the sixth to the 1660s, 60s and 70s. In Germany, a lot of serious consideration of the perils of the emperor, the limitations, and how he would exercise it.
Wallace Ferguson
One of the aspects of where satire could be prevailing is the fact that the person's name, Helen as Paula Tanis is a pseudonym. So the person's gone to the extent of disguising their name. So, I think it's more an aspect of satire, but I think it's more criticism in terms of how they interpret the policies of the Holy Roman Empire.
Rosemary Pennington
So how do we go from status stickum, which seems to be pointing to something related to the state to statistics, which is the you know, field we all love and know so well?
Wallace Ferguson
Yes, that this going back to the sales literature, then it gave credit to Herman Conring, Professor Helmstetter, in the late 1700s, in Germany, and he was credited by using the term statistics in his lectures, and having looked through the British Library of all the listings of his work, I don't I couldn't find that aspect, but references made in in literature of one of the students writing that down and publishing some of his work. So he's given credit for the concept of German university statistics. And as time went on, then Martin Schmidt, one of the next leaders in German universities, used the phrase Collegium Statistical in 1725, to advertise a series of lectures in Germany. And it was phrased as a lesson on the state of affairs. And this aspect of descriptive statistics centered on population, agriculture, finance, constitutions, resources, the policies of the state, in a very general, descriptive way. He's credited as having introduced the concept of statistics into German university statistics Through the reading that I did behind the article he's credited with having used this phrase and taking it into the language used in German in university statistics.
Rosemary Pennington
You're listening to Stats and Stories. And today we're talking with Wallace Ferguson about what an antique text can tell us about statistics.
John Bailer
So I think you also mentioned as part of in your article that the students, Schmeitzel and Achenwall went on to basically derive this term statistic as a precursor to our modern statistics. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Wallace Ferguson
Yes. Gottfried Achenwall is credited as an alarm of the founder of statistics following on from Martin Schmeitzel so and he averred surely derived the term statistic. And he didn't, it didn't sort of build much more on the walk of Herman Conring. But what he did was to try and codify it more in universities, and the concept of a became more established in universities, statistics departments, they will start to start it to be set up around this time, on the issue of German universities, statistics, often called descriptive statistics.
Rosemary Pennington
It's interesting, because hearing you talk about this evolution really sort of makes me I mean, it makes sense that this is kind of how it seems to develop, because it does seem like these are individuals who are trying to understand or tell the story of life in Germany through these this data they were gathering that eventually leads to the idea of statistics, but it does sort of speak to the heart of like, using stats to really understand the world you're in.
Wallace Ferguson
Yes, he also wrote a lot about European states and the statistics in the States as well. One of the one of the problems though, studying this aspect is the language aspects and his books written in German and very few published in English. To get round that then, I would look at other books that are comparable in the tradition of descriptive statistics. For example, Samuel von Pufendorff spoke in seven of 17, or to the complete history of Sweden. And that book was purely descriptive, very few numbers, compared to another book that I've read through the account of Sweden in 1790, written by John Pierre Cattell, the distinction between the two, in the account of Sweden, there was a lot more numbers and tables and description and analysis of populations through number, but going back to the other one, one of the freezing population, but just read that out the kingdom is indifferently well peopled, but the number of its inhabitants is not so overgrown, as it should commence a war purely to be rid of that part of the number. Opportunity of subsistence that was the level of analysis of population that earlier one.
John Bailer
Yeah, you know, I love the quote that you have associated with Achenwall’s successor, it was history is ongoing statistics, statistics is stationary history. And clearly this is using statistics as kind of this numeric summary of the kind of activities of the state. But you know, and we, you know, and in our world now, we also have an understanding of statistics as a discipline and field of inquiry. But I like that idea of kind of this, this connection between how history and statistics were interpreted in particular, you know, we might even say, you know, history is ongoing official statistics now, in terms of the the language that we might use to describe the types of numbers that you know, that that clearly stuck out for you to if you in bringing that into your article. So what was it that kind of hooked you with that?
Wallace Ferguson
It was really to see the progress of, from the book, microscopic and statistical to see how that built up in these countries in Europe, how they started to use the techniques of description, how they started to how it started to spread throughout Europe, how they started to put it in effect, and how it became more departmentalized in university departments in statistics, and how eventually, with our conveyor, how you derive that term statistic, and eventually that was brought into the English language as well by John Sinclair in the 1790s in his statistical account of Scotland, although he looked at it from the point of view, more of the tradition of British political arithmetic interpreting data and you lyrically, as opposed to the more descriptive side of, of the German tradition.
John Bailer
It's interesting to me to think about this idea of a word showing up in one context, particularly in a political context, in this evolution in this sort of this progression and time progression and time to kind of government application and government departments to academic departments, and and, you know, ultimately to even do academic degrees, which is, which is still a fairly new phenomena. I mean, you're well, its within 100 years, particularly, you know, my knowledge is, I'm ignorant more broadly than the states in terms of you not thinking about formal academic departments in statistics or biostatistics. So it's so as you think about that, I mean, this, this timeline, what do you see is kind of the next step in this evolution of this early use of a word and to, to now current practice.
Wallace Ferguson
I think when you see it in the German context, and then it became more modern, in terms of how inferential statistics got going, and how people that quit on it, and the average man, whereas before, it wasn't as inferential, they didn't have the modernity that we have now. So obviously, we've got a lot more money band, and particularly in this country, in the UK, we've got a lot more change, particularly through Brexit and how our statistics would be used, and how in different contexts not, though that we're no longer part of the European Union, or other challenges me calm and how we quantify and describe the economy. I think it's a challenge here in the UK.
Rosemary Pennington
You are interested in statistical etymology, which I had not considered being something someone could be interested in. And I wonder, how did this become something you were intrigued by that you bought, you know, you, you traveled to London and bought this book and have been sort of exploring this movement of the word of statistics through these various texts?
Wallace Ferguson
It just seemed to capture my imagination. It's just this like one massive jigsaw puzzle, because so many different things had to be put together about how the name fit in what was happening at the time? What were the traditional statistics there? How did it how did it connect, and looking at as well, particularly in Italy before there was quite a precedence in the previous century of the state being termed people that microvilli that looked at the state through the prints 1532 Giovanni Botero reason of state 1589 would argue, as a Catholic priest, that could be a country could be morally governance, that was his reports to Machievelli are the people that Francesco Sansovino wrote about government and administration of various kingdoms and publish that and 1578. But what I couldn't detect was the same sort of connectivity between the books throughout that century, which was quite apparent in the case of the German tradition, also looking at the British tradition as well, there wasn't that same etymology, etymology call connection in the derivation of the name for a period of time, also. So that was interesting to compare what was happening before, and also the British political worth of arithmetic, during the same time, as German university statistics.
Rosemary Pennington
I want to ask you very quickly what political arithmetic is, because it's the second time you've mentioned it, and that just sort of intrigued me, as I heard you say it?
Wallace Ferguson
Yes, it was, like interpreting through numbers, for example, people like William Petty, and John Graunt, were particular originators of this tradition in Britain. And it could be the studied the bills of mortality in London, looking at death rates, and they could infer what a population would be, they would get the number of deaths for a small section of London, and then they see what the deaths were per year, and then they could give estimates of what the population was. So it was more in a practical sense, whereas the German University was more descriptive in comparison, although ultimately the both had the same sort of aims for statistics.
John Bailer
So I'm curious, where do you go next? I mean, you sort of, you've been working on this puzzle, and you started to find some of the pieces and you started to put it together. But it seems like you have to, to continue this puzzle. You need to find more pieces and find another direction for this. So what's the next question you want to try to tackle here?
Wallace Ferguson
That's very true. John, I’ll be looking at two things. First one is being looking at how that structure fits in with politics, politics, literature on the framing of the state and reading threw up a surprised a sense about how many authors big name authors have actually participated in the running of the states and have been influential, like people that don't see the Italian author was very senior politician in Florence in 1300, and 1301. And his writing and the Divine Comedy characterized all what happened in the state at that time. His writing and the monarchy also influenced the change from a Republican system in Florence to one that would welcome more the Emperor to try and so then tell no rivalries and problems between Italian city states. Also people in this country like Shakespeare, uses the term status in some of his plays, also was a member of courts of James the Faust, also. And many, particularly some of his plays like Macbeth, King Lear, Antony, and Cleopatra, framed the idea that James Faust was pushing for a United Kingdom, of which he would be king of uniting all the different kingdoms. So as I read through, I started to find more sources like that, particularly going back to Germany as well as going into grasses book, the meeting, which is a fictional account of 1647 meeting of German points, and philosophers. And that is very much interesting as comparison of what's happening with Germany, in 1945. And indeed, he was a writer at that time in group 47, that looked at Germany's constitution and moving on from the language of the period in Germany in 1945, akin to what he wrote about in his book, The meeting it till two, okay.
John Bailer
You know, this is really cool. I mean, so many of us, for those of us that practice in the field, you kind of think about it without this context, necessarily, of always appreciating the history of where you cut where that's come from. And as you as you work, move forward with this, I'll tell you, I would love to see a timeline, where you kind of highlight these different threads, whether it's in Italy, Germany, the UK, the US, and sort of how this, how these evolved, and it both in sequence and in parallel, so that would be a really cool part. And it's always nice to be able to suggest this to someone who's doing all this work, because I'm clearly not well equipped to do it. So thank you for all that you're doing in this regard.
Wallace Ferguson You're welcome.
Rosemary Pennington
Well, that's all the time we have for this episode of Stats and Stories. Wallace, thank you so much for being here today.
Wallace Ferguson Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure.
Rosemary Pennington
Stats and Stories is a partnership between Miami University’s Departments of Statistics, and Media, Journalism and Film, and the American Statistical Association. You can follow us on Twitter, Apple podcasts, or other places you can find podcasts. If you’d like to share your thoughts on the program send your email to statsandstories@miamioh.edu or check us out at statsandstories.net, and be sure to listen for future editions of Stats and Stories, where we discuss the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics.