Numbers Rule

Numbers Rule
Author: George Szpiro
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2020-11-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691209081

The author takes the general reader on a tour of the mathematical puzzles and paradoxes inherent in voting systems, such as the Alabama Paradox, in which an increase in the number of seats in the Congress could actually lead to a reduced number of representatives for a state, and the Condorcet Paradox, which demonstrates that the winner of elections featuring more than two candidates does not necessarily reflect majority preferences. Szpiro takes a roughly chronological approach to the topic, traveling from ancient Greece to the present and, in addition to offering explanations of the various mathematical conundrums of elections and voting, also offers biographical details on the mathematicians and other thinkers who thought about them, including Plato, Pliny the Younger, Pierre Simon Laplace, Thomas Jefferson, John von Neumann, and Kenneth Arrow.

Governing by Numbers

Governing by Numbers
Author: Stephen Ball
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 285
Release: 2018-10-11
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1351789384

Social science researchers have become increasing attentive to the role of numbers in contemporary life. Issues around big data, national test results, and output and performance statistics are now routinely reported and debated in the media. Numbers are a powerful resource for governments as a means to manage and ‘improve’ their populations, and we are increasingly represented, organized and driven by an economy of numbers, which inserts itself into more and more aspects of our lives. This book critically addresses some of the ways in which numbers are deployed in educational governance and practice, and some of the consequences of this deployment for what it means to be educated, to teach, and to learn. Recognising that numbers do not simply represent, but that they change things and have real effects, allows us to move beyond a system where difficult and important issues about what we want from education and from teachers are side-stepped in the push to ‘improve our numbers’. This collection offers a set of starting points from which we might speak back to numbers, drawing on research to explore how numbers change the way we think about ourselves and what we do. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Education Policy.

Governance by Numbers

Governance by Numbers
Author: Alain Supiot
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2017-11-30
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1509907742

In search of a machine of government -- The fortunes of an ideal: ruling by law -- Other perspectives on law -- The dream of social harmony by numbers -- The development of normative uses of quantification -- The law geared to numbers : from the gosplan to the total market -- Calculating the incalculable : the law and economics doctrine -- The encroachment of governance on law -- The limits of governance by numbers -- The withering-away of the state -- The return of "rule by men"--"Genuinely human work in humane conditions"--"Genuinely human work in humane conditions" -- The structure of ties of allegiance

Governing by Numbers

Governing by Numbers
Author: Edward Page
Publisher: Hart Publishing
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2001-03
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1841132071

Governing by Numbers is a jargon-free account of how delegated legislation - laws that do not pass through the full legislative scrutiny to which Acts of Parliament are subjected - is made. It is based on new research involving an analysis of nearly 30,000 pieces of delegated legislation; detailed investigation of 46 recent regulations based on in-depth interviews with those involved in developing, writing and scrutinising them and a major survey of nearly 400 interest groups. Delegated legislation is examined as a form of "everyday policy-making". It deals with important issues, from the level of welfare benefits to weapons exports, animal health and the prevention of air pollution, yet has been largely ignored in studies of the British political and administrative system. This book analyses the distinctive character of everyday policy making and the implications of how it works for our understanding of British democracy.

The New Politics of Numbers

The New Politics of Numbers
Author: Andrea Mennicken
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2021-10-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 3030782018

This open access book offers unique insight into how and where ideas and instruments of quantification have been adopted, and how they have come to matter. Rather than asking what quantification is, New Politics of Numbers explores what quantification does, its manifold consequences in multiple domains. It scrutinizes the power of numbers in terms of the changing relations between numbers and democracy, the politics of evidence, and dreams and schemes of bettering society. The book engages Foucault inspired studies of quantification and the economics of convention in a critical dialogue. In so doing, it provides a rich account of the plurality of possible ways in which numbers have come to govern, highlighting not only their disciplinary effects, but also the collective mobilization capacities quantification can offer. This book will be invaluable reading for academics and graduate students in a wide variety of disciplines, as well as policymakers interested in the opportunities and pitfalls of governance by numbers.

The Politics of Numbers

The Politics of Numbers
Author: William Alonso
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
Total Pages: 491
Release: 1987-09-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1610440021

The Politics of Numbers is the first major study of the social and political forces behind the nation's statistics. In more than a dozen essays, its editors and authors look at the controversies and choices embodied in key decisions about how we count—in measuring the state of the economy, for example, or enumerating ethnic groups. They also examine the implications of an expanding system of official data collection, of new computer technology, and of the shift of information resources into the private sector. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation Census Series

Rule by Numbers

Rule by Numbers
Author: U. Kalpagam
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2014-08-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0739189360

This book examines aspects of the production of statistical knowledge as part of colonial governance in India using Foucault’s ideas of “governmentality.” The modern state is distinctive for its bureaucratic organization, official procedures, and accountability that in the colonial context of governing at a distance instituted a vast system of recordation bearing semblance to and yet differing markedly from the Victorian administrative state. The colonial rule of difference that shaped liberal governmentality introduced new categories of rule that were nested in the procedures and records and could be unraveled from the archive of colonial governance. Such an exercise is attempted here for certain key epistemic categories such as space, time, measurement, classification and causality that have enabled the constitution of modern knowledge and the social scientific discourses of “economy,” “society,” and “history.” The different chapters engage with how enumerative technologies of rule led to proliferating measurements and classifications as fields and objects came within the purview of modern governance rendering both statistical knowledge and also new ways of acting on objects and new discourses of governance and the nation. The postcolonial implications of colonial governmentality are examined with respect to both planning techniques for attainment of justice and the role of information in the constitution of neoliberal subjects.

Science, Numbers and Politics

Science, Numbers and Politics
Author: Markus J. Prutsch
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 386
Release: 2019-06-04
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 303011208X

This study explores the dynamic relationship between science, numbers and politics. What can scientific evidence realistically do in and for politics? The volume contributes to that debate by focusing on the role of “numbers” as a means by which knowledge is expressed and through which that knowledge can be transferred into the political realm. Based on the assumption that numbers are constantly being actively created, translated, and used, and that they need to be interpreted in their respective and particular contexts, it examines how numbers and quantifications are made ‘politically workable’, examining their production, their transition into the sphere of politics and their eventual use therein. Key questions that are addressed include: In what ways does scientific evidence affect political decision-making in the contemporary world? How and why did quantification come to play such an important role within democratic politics? What kind of work do scientific evidence and numbers do politically?

The Tyranny of Numbers

The Tyranny of Numbers
Author: Nick Eberstadt
Publisher: American Enterprise Institute
Total Pages: 340
Release: 1995
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 9780844737645

This book examines the facts and figures that have led to government measures that have been unhelpful or injurious to their intended beneficiaries.

The Politics of Large Numbers

The Politics of Large Numbers
Author: Alain Desrosières
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 386
Release: 1998
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674009691

Begins with study of history of statistics, and shows how the evolution of modern statistics has been inextricably bound up with the knowledge and power of governments.