QUETELET, THE FATHER OF STATISTICS
By the 17th and 18th centuries, two trends in statistics had developed: descriptive statistics and political arithmetic. The main representatives of descriptive statistics were the newly established statistical offices or organisations in the countries. The main task of this movement was to descr...
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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | deu |
| Published: |
University of Oradea
2023-12-01
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| Series: | Annals of the University of Oradea: Economic Science |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://anale.steconomiceuoradea.ro/en/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Volume-2_AUOES_december-2023-79-87.pdf |
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| Summary: | By the 17th and 18th centuries, two trends in statistics had developed:
descriptive statistics and political arithmetic. The main representatives of descriptive
statistics were the newly established statistical offices or organisations in the
countries. The main task of this movement was to describe the status of the state.
Political arithmetic concentrated on the observation of socio-economic phenomena
that could be quantified and on the relationships between social phenomena.
Adolphe Quetelet, who played a major role in many disciplines, was most active in
the field of statistics. He was the man who united the two branches of statistics and
one of the people who made statistics a science. He is associated with the founding
of many statistical journals and societies, and worked tirelessly to establish
international cooperation between statisticians, resulting in the regular International
Statistical Congresses. The aim of this article is to summarise Quetelet's work and
the history of the International Statistical Congresses, which contributed to the
harmonisation of national statistics. Finally, we have examined Quetelet's work in
the field of crime statistics because Quetelet focused his attention not only on crime,
but also on all the phenomena he believed determined the moral face of society. He
also studied the evolution of suicide, divorce, out-of-wedlock births and prostitution.
Quetelet recognised that it was possible to improve the state of human societies
through appropriate state intervention, but that this required an understanding of the
interplay of social processes. It can therefore be said that Quetelet made an
outstanding contribution to many important areas of statistics and can rightly be
called the father of statistics. |
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| ISSN: | 1222-569X 1582-5450 |