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Science 26 March 1999:
Vol. 283. no. 5410, p. 2025
DOI: 10.1126/science.283.5410.2025
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Books

HISTORY OF SCIENCE:
Statistics in the Social World

A review by Stephen E. Fienberg

The Politics of Large Numbers A History of Statistical Reasoning
Alain Desrosières translated by Camille Naish
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1998. 380 pp. $45. ISBN 0-674-68932-1.

Desrosières's narrative relates the development of modern statistics to the knowledge and power of governments, portraying it as a synthesis of scientific and administrative practices.
The author is in the Department of Statistics, 232 Baker Hall, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. E-mail: fienberg{at}stat.cmu.edu

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)