Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics
Benjamin Disraeli, the 19th century British Prime Minister said in the parliament, that there are three types of lies: Lies, damn lies and statistics. The word statistics itself has statist (politica) roots. It was first popularized by the German political scientist Gottfried Aschenwall. "The word statistic indirectly comes from the medieval Latin word status, for a political state although there is also a closely related word in German (statistik) which is also used in a political sense. “Statistik” was popularized by German political scientist Gottfried Aschenwall (1719-1772) in his “Vorbereitung zur Staatswissenschaft” (1748). According to Leiden University, it’s difficult to know exactly when the word ceased to have a meaning close to a “political state” and became more of a mathematical term. The first time the word was used in the Oxford English Dictionary is in 1770, in W. Hooper’s translation of Bielfield’s Elementary Universal Education: “The science, that is cal...
