Misquoted: Herbert G Wells on Mathematical Literacy

"Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write."

The above quote on statistical literacy is often attributed to Herbert G Wells though it belongs to the statistician Samuel S Wilks, who in a 1951 presidential address was paraphrasing Wells:

"Perhaps H. G. Wells was right when he said ‘statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write’!" [4]

The original quote comes from “Mankind in the Making”, first published in 1903 (and not in 1911 as Wikipedia states):

"The great body of physical science, a great deal of the essential fact of financial science, and endless social and political problems are only accessible and only thinkable to those who have had a sound training in mathematical analysis, and the time may not be very remote when it will be understood that for complete initiation as an efficient citizen of one of the new great complex world-wide States that are now developing, it is as necessary to be able to compute, to think in averages and maxima and minima, as it is now to be able to read and write." [1]

Even if Wells mentions averages, maxima and minima, tools of statistics, the text refers to mathematical analysis and not statistics. Wilk’s paraphrasing makes sense in nowadays contexts, and seems somehow natural, even if statistical literacy is more about understanding and (critically) evaluating statements that involve rates and percentages.

Another paraphrasing of the same quote and probably closer to the essence of statistical literacy can be found in George A Lundberg paper published in 1940, however without giving credit to Wells:

"The time is perhaps at hand when it will be recognized that for intelligent living in modern society it is as necessary to be able to think in averages, percentages, and deviations as it is to be able to read and write." [2]

Previous Post <<||>> Next Post

References:
[1] “Mankind in the Making”, by Herbert G Wells, 1903 [Source]
[2] “Statistics in Modern Social Thought”, by George A Lundberg [in “Contemporary Social Theory”, Ed. by H. E. Barnes, H. Becker & F. Becker, 1940] [Source]
[3] “The H. G. Wells Quote on Statistics: A Question of Accuracy”, by James W Tankard Jr., Historia Mathematics 6, 1979 [Source]
[4] “Undergraduate Statistical Education”, by  Samuel S Wilks, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 46, 1951 [Source]