Some Prevalent Fallacies in Vital Statistics

Interpretation of Vital Statistics

The field of vital statistics is as open to investigation, analysis and experimentation as it was three hundred years ago when John Graunt (1620 -1674) introduced the observations on the London Bills of Mortality. The research possibilities are sometimes overlooked by statisticians and demographers because the registration systems now established in developed countries seem routinized and steri...

Principles of Vital Statistics

rain, m.u. i aie univcrsny, ruuaueipma and London : W. B. Saunders Co., Ltd. 1923. Pp. 258. Price, 12s. 6d. net. This small volume is an essay for the practising physician and health worker rather than a text-book for the public health student. As it deals with American statistical data which are differently recorded from those of England, the book is not adapted for teaching in India or Englan...

On Some Prominent Fallacies in Epidemiology

menon are almost identical, and yet we never dream of calling the process general, or attributing it to a general cause. It is true its " prevalence" may be influenced by general conditions. Famine or sickness would render it less general; and plenty and health more general; yet it would be an absurdity to generalize the phenomenon or rather the aggregate of phenomena, as we are apt to treat th...

On Some Prominent Fallacies in Epidemiology

On Some Prominent Fallacies in Epidemiology

There is some thing in the history of the past which exercises a remarkable influence on the human mind. Evidence which, if it related to passing events, would be rejected and ridiculed, is accepted, when it refers to things of former years, with an amount of interest, faith, and veneration, which is very curious. Scepticism as to the present is considered a legitimate, nay, healthy, mental att...