America By The Numbers

How new techniques of quantification shaped the New Deal and American democracy. When the Great Depression struck, the US government lacked tools to assess the situation; there was no reliable way to gauge the unemployment rate, the number of unemployed, or how many families had abandoned their farms to become migrants. In America by the Numbers, Emmanuel Didier examines the development in the 1930s of one such tool: representative sampling. Didier describes and analyzes the work of New Deal agricultural economists and statisticians who traveled from farm to farm, in search of information that would be useful for planning by farmers and government agencies. Didier shows that their methods were not just simple enumeration; these new techniques of quantification shaped the New Deal and American democracy even as the New Deal shaped the evolution of statistical surveys. Didier explains how statisticians had to become detectives and anthropologists, searching for elements that would help them portray America as a whole. Representative surveys were one of the most effective instruments for their task. He examines pre-Depression survey techniques; the invention of the random sampling method and the development of the Master Sample; and the application of random sampling by employment experts to develop the “Trial Census of Unemployment.”

Discusses the makeup of the U.S. population covering such issues as race, immigration, language, wealth, and sexuality.

This fun colorful, and superbly informative book teaches children about numbers using recognizable places, events, and facts from the state of Tennessee.

Focusing on crucial aspects of the history of Darwinism in America, Numbers gets to the heart of American resistance to Darwin's ideas. He provides a much-needed historical perspective on today's quarrels about creationism and evolution--and illuminates the specifically American nature of this struggle.

In the past forty years an entirely new paradigm has developed regarding the contact population of the New World. Proponents of this new theory argue that the American Indian population in 1492 was ten, even twenty, times greater than previous estimates. In Numbers From Nowhere David Henige argues that the data on which these high counts are based are meager and often demonstrably wrong. Drawing on a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, Henige illustrates the use and abuse of numerical data throughout history. He shows that extrapolation of numbers is entirely subjective, however masked it may be by arithmetic, and he questions what constitutes valid evidence in historical and scientific scholarship.

Black Stats—a comprehensive guide filled with contemporary facts and figures on African Americans—is an essential reference for anyone attempting to fathom the complex state of our nation. With fascinating and often surprising information on everything from incarceration rates, lending practices, and the arts to marriage, voting habits, and green jobs, the contextualized material in this book will better attune readers to telling trends while challenging commonly held, yet often misguided, perceptions. A compilation that at once highlights measures of incredible progress and enumerates the disparate impacts of social policies and practices, this book is a critical tool for advocates, educators, and policy makers. Black Stats offers indispensable information that is sure to enlighten discussions and provoke debates about the quality of Black life in the United States today—and help chart the path to a better future. There are less than a quarter-million Black public school teachers in the U.S.—representing just 7 percent of all teachers in public schools. Approximately half of the Black population in the United States lives in neighborhoods that have no White residents. In the five years before the Great Recession, the number of Black-owned businesses in the United States increased by 61 percent. A 2010 study found that 41 percent of Black youth feel that rap music videos should be more political. There are no Black owners or presidents of an NFL franchise team. 78 percent of Black Americans live within 30 miles of a coal-fired power plant, compared with 56 percent of White Americans.

"Arkansas facts, symbols, geography, and famous places are introduced using numbers. Learn about 1 Pivot Rock, 3 ivory-bill woodpeckers, 8 square dancers, 20 pine trees, and more. Each topic is introduced with a poem, followed by detailed side-bar text"--Provided by publisher.