Excerpt from Appletons' Popular Science Monthly: December, 1899 Now it happens that a great many investigations in descriptive sociology do not as yet admit of the introduction of exact statis tical - that is, arithmetical - inquiries which, nevertheless, do ad mit the use of algebraically quantitative methods. In the mono graphic description of a community many questions arise which can not be answered by the entry of figures in a column, but which could be answered by entering in a column a symbol indicat ing that a certain trait, habit, or choice could be predicated of a large majority, or of a small majority, or of only a large minority, or of only a small minority of the entire population. That is to say, it often happens that an observer who can not take a perfect census (getting answers to all his questions from every individual in the community), and who therefore can not fill out his columns with arithmetical values, can, by such interviewing as is possible to him and by such an examination of the objective products of social activity as are open to the inspection of any one who chooses to observe them critically, determine with absolute certainty whether certain things are true of majorities or only of minorities. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.