Nightingale’s Tea Leaves

It gave me inordinate pleasure when Brigitte handed me a story in the New York Times today about Florence Nightingale (1820-1910). Nightingale was an early user of statistics, and even graphed them as pie charts, in her professional work. She is quoted as having said: “To understand God’s thought, we must study statistics.”  A link to a mortality chart that she produced is here. In 1859 she became the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society. Her own interests in statistics were inspired by the work of an older contemporary, Adolph Quetelet, a Belgian mathematician who first introduced the use of statistics into sociology.

That quote of hers will be read with pleasure by those of us who’ve worked or still work for Editorial Code and Data, Inc. And the appearance of this story now is, as Brigitte puts it, a meaningful coincide. Nightingale, already becoming known as a promoter of the nursing profession, came into her own during the Crimean War (1853-1856) when she led a large group of nurses (53) to the Crimea to tend to the wounded. As rumors of war hover over Crimea again, it is well to remember Nightingale who’d found a way of reading God’s thoughts—probably long before she became a statistician.

You Can’t Stop That Clock

Catching up on printed media all at once after a lag of several days—an almost electric shock accompanies the experience—made me think that we really do have far too many people in the world. The collective consequence of that is there in print. This got me wondering about the current population of the globe. I went to worldometers, one of the population clocks, and took a look.

I measured first how many people accrue to world population in a minute. The number was 144. That number is births net of deaths. In my statistical minute, I noted 249 births and 105 deaths, producing my net population growth. Now that translates to 8,640 net new people every hour, 207,360 every day, and 75.7 million every year. And that clock, when you watch it, is absolutely relentless.

worldometers labels itself “real time world statistics.” Concerning “statistics,” there are two views. One derives from their right use. When used with caution and handled carefully, as if they were dangerous explosives, we get a lens on the vast collective. The other view characterizes the abuse of statistics with a famous phrase: Lies, damned lies, and statistics. Which of the two applies to worldometers? Well, censuses of population always appear at a lag of time and, because it takes several months to conduct any census, they’re not even accurate snapshots. But such population clocks more or less accurately reflect change that can be tracked, census to census. So here we’re dealing with a truth—indeed, watching that clock rushing madly along, a dangerous truth.

At the same time, lies and damned lies are there as well. I read today an article which suggests that as homeownership rises, so does joblessness. Some feeble-minded economists have collected data on both and—assuming an entirely untraceable cause and effect relationship—proclaim that homeownership may be a baddy.

In the time I put these words on the screen about 42,000 people have been added to the world’s population. Educating all of these new people is truly a growing burden. It does not surprise me that, as population increases, the average skill of economists is tumbling like the seeds are falling out there today—covering my driveway in a nice mixture of yellows and whites.

Where Statistics are Conspicuous by Absence

It might be very interesting, as a way of assessing cultural trends, if we could get good statistics for a handful of countries—or even just for the United States—on the number of practitioners of psychotherapy by major schools and, of course, over time: say 1900, 1950, and 2000. No such thing. I’ve tried. I’ve arrived here because two such schools came to mind in the last couple of months. One is hypnotherapy, pioneered by the American Milton H. Erikson (1901-1980) and the other logotherapy, the work of the Austrian Viktor Frankl (1905-1997). For me they stand way, way above the rest, but there is a strange commonality between them that I thought I would explore—and report on, most likely on Borderzone—in 2013.

Michelle is now taking a course, sponsored by her hospital, on hypnotherapy. It tickled me pink when I discovered that the course is centered on Milton Erikson’s methods. And as for logotherapy, I’ve known about it since my young adulthood, back when I was marching through the schools: Freudian, Jungian, Adlerian, Eriksonian (no relation to Milton H. above), Horneyan, and then, finally Frankl’s. Frankl’s logotherapy is centered on meaning, and having arrived there, I had arrived—at a genuine theory. I didn’t bother much with the explosive growth of all kinds of therapies thereafter except to read a couple of books by B.F. Skinner the behaviorist.

Here I would note that while we avidly collect statistics on everything to do with money and people (the Economic and Population censuses), culture gets short shrift. I’ve long felt that statistics are a lens into the realm of vast numbers. Concerning psychotherapy, I found two numbers on Wikipedia. One lists the number of schools in 1980 (250) and the number in 1996 (450). The references cited are minimal and essentially impossible to trace. And even finding a coherent listing of such schools, they are quite varied, don’t agree, and list the names of broad categories, not actual schools. Fuzz, fog. Absent  the sharp resolution that statistics offer.

The Richer the Poorer?

I’m accustomed to using the lens of statistics to enhance my understanding of cultural phenomena. Here is such a glimpse. Consider that in 1958 disposable personal income per capita was $9,433; in 2008, the corresponding number was $28,741. These numbers are comparable because both are expressed in constant dollars pegged to purchasing power of the dollar in the year 2000. These two numbers tell us that in 2008 we had three times more real wealth per person than we had in 1958. Dwight D. Eisenhower was president at the time; the Interstate Highway System was under construction, had been since 1956. The highest income tax rate in 1958 was 91 percent on income exceeding $400,000 ($3 million in 2008 dollars); the top rate in 2008 was 35 percent on income above $357,700. To the best of my knowledge, no state, county, or school district tottered on the brink of bankruptcy in 1958. And college education was free to all residents of the several States of the Union.

These thoughts surfaced because Brigitte happened across an article on commondreams.org by Ralph Nader titled “Purloining the People’s Property,” available here. The article’s gist is that the situation has drastically changed. Our legislators are privatizing public functions with a kind of desperation unworthy of those we appoint to govern us. But I need not seek examples in Arizona, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Indiana, or Illinois. I have examples right here at home; the de facto bankrupt Detroit School System comes to mind when I look around.

The value of the statistical underpinning is that it shows, beyond question, that the causes of our deterioration are not really financial. Nor can we blame it on war. In 1958 the end of World War II was thirteen years back. It had consumed $4.1 trillion in 2008 dollars. The Korean war was five years back; it had gobbled up $320 billion (same basis) and, in its peak year, it commanded 4.2 percent of Gross Domestic Product. Something else has changed. Unfortunately we have much less precise access—if any, for that matter—to the invisible structures that represent a collective of souls. If we could see that structure unambiguously—as with patient effort we can see the financial structure—we would know where the problem lies and why it persists.