Lies, damned lies, and . . .
IT WAS Mark Twain who coined the famous phrase, denoting his suspicion of statistics. Many congressional Republicans seem to share his concerns. They are determined to stop the Census Bureau from using statistical methods of sampling when it conducts America's next census in 2000. An accurate census, they argue, requires counting everybody in America. The Census Bureau's statisticians assert otherwise. But the unrelenting Republican attack is forcing them to explain a truth that the average person finds hard to grasp: the best way to know how many Americans there are is not to count them all.
This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Lies, damned lies, and . . .”
From the July 19th 1997 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the editionDiscover more
The great-man theory of Wall Street
Why finance is still dominated by bold individuals
Hong Kong’s property slump may be terminal
Demographics and geopolitics will make a recovery harder
Why everyone wants to lend to weak companies
An unanticipated side-effect of Donald Trump’s election victory
American veterans now receive absurdly generous benefits
An enormous rise in disability payments may complicate debt-reduction efforts
Why Black Friday sales grow more annoying every year
Nobody is to blame. Everyone suffers
Trump wastes no time in reigniting trade wars
Canada and Mexico look likely to suffer