the candy trade in the United States of America, estimates had a place, and foreign missions involve matters about which “correct figures” are more difficult to obtain than the candy business.  An estimate carefully made and understood, a deliberate statement expressed in round numbers, is not unscientific:  it is only unscientific to mistake such figures for what they do not profess to be.  When men object that the figures are not exact, if the figures do not profess to be exact, it is the objector who is unscientific, not the statistics.

Nevertheless, we must acknowledge that the admission of estimates and round figures does open the door to serious error.  Men will be tempted to mistake an estimate for a guess.  An estimate is a statement for which reasons can be given, a guess is—­a mere guess.  The great safeguard against guesses, as against all slipshod statistical entries, is the assurance that the statements made will be used.  At present missionary statistics are untrustworthy mainly because so few people use them, and consequently those who supply them do not feel the need of revising them carefully.

Furthermore, it is important to bear in mind that the field for estimate in statistics of the kind proposed is limited; it only embraces figures for which exact totals are unobtainable, for instance, area, population, and figures of societies which refuse to give statistics, etc., and in every case precision in these statistics is not of vital importance.

(iii) The main difference between our tables and those of others is that we make them very small and express in each a relation.  The figures supplied by the societies in their reports are seldom related to anything; they are mere bundles of sticks; we suggest the introduction of a relation into every table which gives to each figure a significance which by itself it does not possess.  In our tables every figure is set to work.  Our idea of missionary statistics demands that they should be a basis for action.  We think that it is waste of time to collect statistics from which no conclusion can be certainly drawn both by the compiler and the reader—­a conclusion which ought to be suggestive when taken alone by itself, and, when considered in relation to the conclusions suggested by similar tables, compelling.

But it may be said that we are adding to the already overwhelming burden of accounts and reports over which missionaries toil to the great detriment of their proper work.  The tables in this book are arranged apparently for the worker on the spot as well as for the intelligent supporter and director at home; why multiply tables and trouble the missionary with the sums of proportion?  Why not ask the man there simply to give the necessary facts and then let the man at home work out for special purposes the various relations?  The answer is simple:  we ourselves have been asked to fill up long schedules of unrelated facts; and we know that the labour is intolerable.