@article{1386272,
      recid = {1386272},
      author = {Didier, Emmanuel, and Sen, Priya Vari,},
      title = {America by the numbers : quantification, democracy, and  the birth of national statistics /},
      pages = {1 online resource (408 pages).},
      abstract = {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,".},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/1386272},
}