Unit 2. A very brief history of statistics

1. Practice the pronunciation of the words:

Derive, affair, figure, community, specialist, society, decision, technique, supply, launch, permeate.

1. Read and memorize the following words and word combinations. Use them in the sentences. Pay attention to the prepositions.

deal with depend on

provide gut feeling

make sense of to cope with

reliable to launch (a new product)

come in handy

1. Read and translate the following sentences:

1. Can you deal with this gentleman's complaint? 2. The government must deal with unemployment. 3. The programme dealt with teenage pregnancy. 4. She's used to dealing with foreign customers. 5. This booklet provides useful information about local services. 6. It's a new scheme to provide schools with free computers. 7. He's written me this note but it doesn't make any sense. 8. It makes sense to buy now while prices are low. 9. I'm trying to make sense of this document.10. Andy's very reliable - if he says he'll do something, he'll do it.11. I'm not sure about the reliability of those statistics. 12. I am reliably informed that the concert has been cancelled. 13. Don't throw those jars away - they might come in handy. 14. It's a nice house and it's handy for the station. 15. She depends on her son for everything. 16. The city's economy depends largely on the car industry. 17. You can always depend o n Andy to keep his promises. 18. I had a gut feeling that he was going to come back. 19. How do you cope with stress? 20. The book was launched last February. 21. The airline will launch its new transatlantic service next month.

1. Read and translate the text:

The word ‘statistics’ derives from the modern Latin term statisticum collegium (council of state) and the Italian word statista (statesman or politician). ‘Statistics’ was used in 1584 for a person skilled in state affairs, having political knowledge, power or influence by Sir William Petty, a seventeenth-century polymath and statesman, used the phrase ′political arithmetic′ for ‘statistics’. (A book entitled Sir William Petty, 1623–1687, written by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, and published in London in 1895, quotes Petty as saying that ‘By political arithmetic, we mean the art of reasoning by figures upon things relating to government’.) By 1787, ‘statistic’ (in the singular), meant the science relating to the branch of political science dealing with the collection, classification and discussion of facts bearing on the condition of a state or a community.

‘Statists’ were specialists in those aspects of running a state which were particularly related to numbers. This encompassed the tax liabilities of the citizens as well as the state’s potential for raising armies. The word ‘statistics’ is possibly the descendant of the word ‘statist’.

By 1837, statistics had moved into many areas beyond government. Statistics, used in the plural, were (and are) defined as numerical facts (data) collected and classified in systematic ways. In current use, statistics is the area of study that aims to collect and arrange numerical data, whether relating to human affairs or to natural phenomena.