26 August 2025

✏️Emile Cheysson - Collected Quotes

"If statistical graphics, although born just yesterday, extends its reach every day, it is because it replaces long tables of numbers and it allows one not only to embrace at glance the series of phenomena, but also to signal the correspondence or anomalies, to find the causes, to identify the laws." (Émile Cheysson, circa 1877)

"It is this combination of observation at the foundation and geometry at the summit that I wished to express by naming this method Geometric Statistics. It cannot be subject to the usual criticisms directed at the use of pure mathematics in economic matters, which are said to be too complex to be confined within a formula." (Emile Cheysson, "La Statistique géométrique", 1888)

"It then becomes a method of graphical interpolation or extrapolation, which involves hypothetically extending a curve within or beyond the range of known data points, assuming the continuity of its pattern. In this way, one can fill in gaps in past observations and even probe the depths of the future." (Emile Cheysson, "La Statistique géométrique", 1888)

"This method is what I call Geometric Statistics. But despite its somewhat forbidding name-which I’ll explain in a moment - it is not a mathematical abstraction or a mere intellectual curiosity accessible only to a select few. It is intended, if not for all merchants and industrialists, then at least for that elite who lead the masses behind them. Practice is both its starting point and its destination. It was inspired in me more than fifteen years ago by the demands of the profession, and if I’ve decided to present it today, it’s because I’ve since verified its advantages through various applications, both in private industry and in public service." (Emile Cheysson, "La Statistique géométrique", 1888)

"Graphical statistics thus possess a variety of resources that it deploys depending on the case, in order to find the most expressive and visually appealing way to depict the phenomenon. One must especially avoid trying to convey too much at once and becoming obscure by striving for completeness. Its main virtue - or one might say, its true reason for being - is clarity. If a diagram becomes so cluttered that it loses its clarity, then it is better to use the numerical table it was meant to translate." (Emile Cheysson, "Albume de statistique graphique", 1889)

"This method not only has the advantage of appealing to the senses as well as to the intellect, and of illustrating facts and laws to the eye that would be difficult to uncover in long numerical tables. It also has the privilege of escaping the obstacles that hinder the easy dissemination of scientific work - obstacles arising from the diversity of languages and systems of weights and measures among different nations. These obstacles are unknown to drawing. A diagram is not German, English, or Italian; everyone immediately grasps its relationships of scale, area, or color. Graphical statistics are thus a kind of universal language, allowing scholars from all countries to freely exchange their ideas and research, to the great benefit of science itself." (Emile Cheysson, "Albume de statistique graphique", 1889)

"Today, there is hardly any field of human activity that does not make use of graphical statistics. Indeed, it perfectly meets a dual need of our time: the demand for information that is both rapid and precise. Graphical methods fulfill these two conditions wonderfully. They allow us not only to grasp an entire series of phenomena at a glance, but also to highlight relationships or anomalies, identify causes, and extract underlying laws. They advantageously replace long tables of numbers, so that - without compromising the precision of statistics - they broaden and popularize its benefits." (Emile Cheysson, "Albume de statistique graphique", 1889)

"When a law is contained in figures, it is buried like metal in an ore; it is necessary to extract it. This is the work of graphical representation. It points out the coincidences, the relationships between phenomena, their anomalies, and we have seen what a powerful means of control it puts in the hands of the statistician to verify new data, discover and correct errors with which they have been stained." (Emile Cheysson, "Les methods de la statistique", 1890)

Sources: Bibliothéque Nationale de la France [>>

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