quantitative history humor!

For those of you dying to see quantitative history humor represented in the public sphere, look no further than Wiley Miller's "Non Sequitur" for today, below the fold.

Even the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the epistemic status of historical facts can be funny!

My personal favorite bit of highbrow wit about the uncertain status of facts comes from John Coatsworth:

I take it as a duty, therefore, to issue a clear warning: all of the numbers in this article are, without exception, inaccurate; however, that is not a valid argument against their use. Literary estimates typically contain fewer errors (we all know that Mexico was 'poorer' than its northern neighbor), but only because they specify a ridiculously wide range of values. Numerical estimates have the virtue of inspiring controversy and thus may lead to the compilation of more accurate statistics.... even failures can prove fruitful for the advancement of historical knowledge.*

But there's also this, attributed to Lord Stamp, on official statistics of India:

The Government are very keen on amassing statistics -- they collect them, add them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams. But what you must never forget is that every one of those figures comes in the first instance from the chowty dar (village watchman), who just puts down what he damn well pleases.**

*John H. Coatsworth,"Obstacles to Economic Growth in Nineteenth-Century Mexico," The American Historical Review 83, no. 1 (February 1978): 80-100; 80-81.

**Cited in Charles H. Feinstein and Mark Thomas, Making History Count: A Primer in Quantitative Methods for Historians, (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 319.

The homepage for"Non Sequitur" is http://www.ucomics.com/nonsequitur/.