Boosting the Signal: Census, Statistics and Historians
My estimable colleague Andrew Smith has blogged very thoughtfully on the ways that historians can illuminate the true value of the census in Canadian society, both through our study of the past applications of this data and our promotion of statistical literacy in future generations of voters and politicians.
I commented there but I will reiterate here that it’s sad how stoutly math-phobic many history students seem to be. By equating mathematics and statistics with something they can’t and don’t really want to learn, too many people leave themselves open to be manipulated about history and their current world by those who count on that essential ignorance!
Sadly true. I’ve tried using census data in my various classes, and students freak out. My majors whimper: “I chose history so I wouldn’t had to do numbers, wah wah wah…” My students of US History are horrified to see the numbers, and want to know why the government is hiding all this data. That’s when I whimper.