Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 122: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Editorial Tele OF THE HAVE learned that more than I forty-five per cent of the men in the United States are below average in height; that over forty per cent of the children in the country are subnormal in intelligence for their age, and that over forty-seven per cent of the popu- lation suffers from subaverage health. That, furthermore, it is still true that one third of the nation is ill-clothed, ill-housed, and ill-fed. More impor- tant, I have discovered the group in this country that has produced these shocking statistics—a group whose intention it is to maintain those conditions for all time to come! Every word of the above statements can be proven in full. It may seem sur- prising that a non-news magazine like this one, without the help of outside investigators, has been able to un- cover this widespread plot; it merely indicates the complete failure of our more widely touted investigative agen- cies to carry out the work they should have done. There is such a group of people; a single, relatively small part of our population has brought those statistics into being, and is manipulating things to see to it that they stay that way. So long as this group operates, no one can hope to change that situation! Who are these villains? The statisticians, of course. They defined “‘average’’ in such a way that as many units are above the average point as there are below. So long as they maintain that definition, more than forty-five per cent of the men in the country have to be below average in height. VILLAINS PleCe So long as the definition of “nor- mal” remains what it is, more than forty per cent of the children of the country have to be subnormal. And since our concept of “normal” is derived as it is—why, it’s also true that one-third of the millionaires in this country are ill-housed, ill-fed and ill- clothed by millionaire-standards. The statistical method of informa- tion handling an analysis can be of immense service to humanity; the difficulty is that it is one of the most complex and tricky systems of hand- ling facts that Man has invented yet. Statistical methods are used when, and only when, the situation involved is too complex to be handled by a more direct technique. If the factors involved in a problem can be separated out, statistical methods are unnecessary. By the nature of things, therefore, statistical methods can be expected to be extremely confusing, extremely hard to evaluate, and almost certain to constitute a trap for the unwary. The statistical items listed above, for instance, depend on the fact that there are certain facts that are-by- definition, and an entirely different set of facts that are-by-nature. The height of a man in inches is a number ; the number is dependent on two fac- tors—the arbitrarily defined length called “one inch” and the fact-of- nature, the man’s height. English language can add to the confusion. There’s the Lincoln story illustrating that. “If you call a dog’s tail a leg,” someone asked him, “how many legs does a dog have?” 120 CoOnnicloooks CO