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During the Reformation, when external confusion was at its height, you might have ascertained almost statistically what persons and what regions each side snatched from the other; it was not doubtful which was which. The history of their respective victories and defeats could consequently be written.

Then they pointed out that some people are just plain nuts. Many people who read the Grudge Report took these two points to mean that all UFO observers either had spots in front of their eyes or were nuts. They broke the reports down statistically. The people who wrote the report found that over 70 per cent of the people making sightings reported a light- colored object.

Statistically, starships were the safest means of transportation ever used by man; so safe that Very Important Persons used them regularly, unthinkingly, and as a matter of course. Statistically, the starships' fatality rate per million passenger-light-years was a small fraction of that of the automobiles' per million passenger-miles.

But the evasive action taken by a human pilot, aided by a randomity selector, is not logical and therefore cannot be handled by a computer. Like the path of a microscopic particle in Brownian motion, its position can only be predicted statistically; estimating its probable location is the best that can be done. And, in space warfare, probability of that order is simply not good enough.

Suppose any one were to argue that medicine is of no use, because it could be proved statistically, that the percentage of deaths was just the same, among people who had been taught how to open a medicine chest, and among those who did not so much as know the key by sight. The argument is absurd; but it is not more preposterous than that against which I am contending.

"I was reading a work the other day," said Egremont, "that statistically proved that the general condition of the people was much better at this moment than it had been at any known period of history."

But La Flegerc is doubtless the best point for getting a statistically accurate idea of how the Alps lie, of any easily accessible to ladies. This print you may regard more as a chart than as a picture. Our guide pointed out every feature with praiseworthy accuracy. Midmost is Mont Blanc; on the right the Glacier de Boisson.

That's what I call an old man. Now, said the Professor, you don't mean to tell me that I have got to that yet? What age is that? said I, statistically. Fifty-two years, answered the Professor. Balzac ought to know, said I, if it is true that Goethe said of him that each of his stories must have been dug out of a woman's heart. But fifty-two is a high figure.

Yet, since it has been found statistically that three out of four men acquire their maladies from amateurs, it is manifest that prostitutes only hang on the fringe of a vaster immorality. Men, who know more of these diseases than women, are, on the average, much less chaste. Medical students who know most are not more moral than other men.

"The statement that the English Poor Rate increases more rapidly than the wealth and population of the country, and threatens to absorb that wealth, is statistically proved to be erroneous.