The History of Statistics

Data have been collected since the earliest times. The earliest archaeological evidence of the collection of data anywhere in the world comes from southern Africa. An artefact said to date from more than  35 000 years ago was found in the Lebombo Mountains in eSwatini (formerly known as Swaziland). It shows the recording of numerical data in the form of tally marks. 

Another archaeological find, the Ishango Bone, which also shows grouped sets of tally marks, is dated at over 20 000 years old and originates from the Democratic Republic of Congo near the border with Uganda.

For hundreds of years, governments have needed to have information about the population and their possessions so that taxes could be levied to maintain the state and the court, and it was also essential for them to be aware of the military strength of the nation.

In more recent years, there is a need for a greater volume of statistics on an increasing variety of subjects. This is the result of:

the growth of population,

the progression of industrialisation,

the trend of globalisation,

advances in the organisation of agriculture such as the introduction of command agriculture (The Targeted Command Agriculture scheme) in Zimbabwe

As in many countries, the government of Zimbabwe is involved more and more in the affairs of the people and of business and in monitoring and controlling the workings of the economy. It therefore requires information on:

production;

earnings;

expenditure;

imports and exports.

Over the years, governments in most countries, including Zimbabwe, have partly taken over many of the activities that used to be part of the private sector of the economy, such as education and health services. It is vital therefore for information to be available on:

population growth or decline;

disease and its incidence;

housing conditions.

All this has led to an enormous expansion in the volume of data that are being collected by governments over the last few decades. For governments to make sensible decisions, however, these data need to be correctly collected, processed and analysed.