Excerpt from The World of to-Day: Official Statistics What They Contain and How to Use Them
In order that a Government should perform its administrative and executive functions efficiently, it is necessary that it should be adequately informed on such subjects as the size and local distribution of the population, the resources of the country, the national income and taxable capacity, the magnitude of internal and external trade, and the means of communication. As the duties thrown on the administration have increased, knowledge of social conditions, of health, of the details of the economic situation and of many other affairs has become more and more necessary. The measurable aspects of these subjects form the material of national statistics, which are called official when the information is collected and tabulated by Government departments. Such statistics were in the past primarily for the use of the administration and were often kept private; but since the actions of Government have become more directly the concern of the people as well as of Parliament, administrative statistics have been published, and especially during the past thirty years other statistics more directly designed for information on matters of public interest without reference to executive action have been collected and published. The whole mass of information of either kind forms "official statistics," and it is the object of this book to afford some help in understanding their nature, the methods of their publication and their use.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге The World of to-Day