Humane Statistics

...ECONOMY Br Emma S Woytinsky Piaegei 601 pp $12 50 Reviewed by ROBERT LEKACHMAN Despite deficiencies which Princeton's Oskar Morgenstern has most sharply criticized, American statistics are notoriously the best and most copious m the universe Each year the U S Census Bureau publishes the Statistical Abstract, some 1,100 closely printed pages of facts and numbers Businessmen, bankers and scholars who seek more current estimates can consult such excellent public sources as the Council of Economic Advisers' monthly Economic Indicatois...

...the Suivey of Cm rent Business and the Federal Reset ve Bulletin The one major area of mystery, defense spending, may soon be illuminated by the Department of Defense's new monthly Defense Indicators Although the economists and the statisticians who voraciously masticate these data are naturally never satisfied, their government serves them well The curious layman, on the other hand, may find himself depressed by the sheer bulk of statistical description and baffled to interpret some of the measures that he finds Here Emma Woytmsky's expert hand is truly a help, tor she has constructed nothing less than a humane guide to the dimensions, structure and functioning of the American economy I never thought that I should find myself saying a statistical compendium could be read like a true book, but it is an accurate comment on Mrs Woytmsky's achievement The likely consequence of looking up some specific bit of information is the extended browsing that is one of the lures of a really good dictionary Exposition for the layman is an art of which Mrs Woytinsky is a past mistress With her late husband, W S Woytinsky, she pioneered popular statistical presentation in Germany with Der Welt in Zahlen (The World in Ftguies) In this country the two collaborators, a mini-research institute in themselves, produced a massive World Population and Production and the equally impressive World Commerce and Governments The present volume combines virtues common to other Woytinsky enterprises and rare elsewhere What is especially striking is the author's feeling for the individuals who underlie the statistics and her concern for poor people and impoverished lives Although she is never pedantic, Mrs Woytinsky succeeds also in warning her readers of the data's limitations Facts are usable only m perspective In this book the perspectives are both temporal and geographical Where it is possible, as in the discussion of population, Mrs Woytinsky carries her story back to American origins and forward into the future just as far as the demographers are willing to risk their projections American data are placed in an international setting One example Americans spend on alcohol and tobacco roughly the total combined national income of Sweden, Norway and Denmark The volume looks steadily toward the future, never more so than m the chapter devoted to science and technology Here indeed is the cutting edge of change As recently as 1959, the Federal government's share of total national expenditure on research and development was "only" $6 5 billion Last year the total soared to $15 5 billion Or take another persuasive index of the direction of a technological society In 1930 there were only 46,000 scientists in the entire country By 1963 this modest figure had increased nearly nine-fold to 410,000 far better paid, esteemed and treated men and women Rejoicing might be given pause by Mrs Woytmsky's excellent graphic account of just how important defense and space are in the care and coddling of the scientific community In sum, this is a most valuable study, beautifully clear for the enlightenment of the statistically unsophisticated and sufficiently documented to serve the specialist as a valuable additional reference...