Quantifying the World: UN Ideas and Statistics

Good data, Michael Ward argues, serve to enhance a perception about life
as well as to deepen an understanding of reality. This history of the UN's role in
fostering international statistics in the postwar period demonstrates how statistics
have shaped our understanding of the world. Drawing on well over 40 years of
experience working as a statistician and economist in more than two dozen countries
around the world, Ward traces the evolution of statistical ideas and how they have
responded ...