Employment statistics are bad this is a concern

Of course, they are everywhere. Electorales, commercial, financial or medical statistics describe and dissects today our lesser behaviors. They are even much more. Their figures reveal trends, diagnose malaise, rarer problems, eventually provide exits. In the light of both services, nobody thinks without them. But anyone not more, or almost, not thinking to inquire about their history, and the risk of their power.

Apparently, their family tree goes back to the antiquity. Twenty-three centuries before our era, in the Chinese Empire, there were carefully livestock and could compare the results of a region or year to another. Among the first uses of writing, Sumer and Egypt, much is related to the inventories as well as poetry or prayer. This is who should draw attention: a timeless connection collects counts, the master of the signs and the control policy on the economy.

However, it is only in the modern era in Europe that is in place a political and scientific change which we still depend in large part. Michel Foucault has highlighted this mutation, especially in his course at the College of the France of 1977-1978 entitled "Security, territory, Population" (published in 2004, co-published with Gallimard-threshold). In the 18th century, three perspectives have changed in interacting on the other. The eyes of the power was centered on the family, who remained the main centre of reference. It is now set on the population, it is appropriate to ensure the general welfare. This change of scale was made possible by the development of data collection, but especially by the calculation of probabilities. Births, marriages, deaths reveal frequencies which appeared not to the naked eye.

To govern the people and their well-being is therefore a new discipline, "political economy", which will contribute to give birth the world today.

Is therefore not a coincidence if the very term statistics comes, most probably (the origin is discussed), Italian "statista", "statesman": statistics are new knowledge directly related to the modern power. This relationship has yet evolved with the progress of the mathematical tools the path is very long of Adolphe Quetelet (1766-1874) to John Tukey (1915-2000) , the power of computers, the birth of the multivariate analyses. Now, wherever we are, whatever we do, this leaves us targeted, so neutral, remote, but perfectly adjusted and calculated.

Hence this strange feeling that everyone feels a day or the other: organizations very various eventually hear us, with astonishing accuracy, with minute details that we have never entrusted to them. Our habits, our purchases, our trips, our opinions, everything seems to be passed to the screen. It will be able to soon, according to your age, your business and your region, the time at which you take your shower or the colour of your underwear. No direct espionage is however exercised, and any paranoia here without object. It was only the paradoxical result of refinement of the statistics. More tools become abstract, the result is precise, singled out.

What we forget, if one has eyes fixed solely on the figures, is the experienced reality, never, in fact, coincides with statistics. The suicide rate is stable, very well. This says nothing about the person that, at the time, will end his days. Employment statistics are bad, this is a concern. For the one who does not know how to feed her children next week, the drama is unique. Statistics draw a world. The people live in another. This is obvious to not forget. Otherwise, it loses in humanity what it gains in knowledge.