Overview

'A masterpiece of storytelling' Robert Winder Georgina Sturge, House of Commons Library statistician and author of the critically acclaimed Bad Data, explores the rich history of the times the UK has counted itself - from the revolutionary first census of 1801 to modern worries over technological surveillance. Condensing a whole society into numbers brought hidden problems to light: mapping cholera deaths in Soho led researchers to a single deadly water pump; Florence Nightingale stunned the Victorian establishment with her diagrams showing disease was the soldier's hidden enemy; and the discovery that industries like firework-making were almost entirely staffed by women helped improve workers' rights. Full of fascinating social detail, Sum of Us draws out the human stories captured in the vast tangle of data the UK has collected over two centuries. It provides a vital snapshot not of who we imagine ourselves to be - but who we really are.

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9780349129037

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Reviews

From Domesday Book to modern census debates, Commons Library statistician Sturge explores how Britain has kept track of itself. Insightful and engaging, this is a smart, often surprising history of data, identity and the stories numbers can tell * The i * Remarkable. A history of data-gathering that is also a masterpiece of storytelling. Georgina Sturge has illuminated Britain's social history with a searching beam of good sense, always sensitive to the poetry of actual fact * Robert Winder * This book covers a formidable scope, does an excellent job of drawing human narratives from the numbers, and encourages a critical approach, highlighting how statistics can either illuminate or cloud our judgement, depending on how they are used * Dr Sophie Kay * A fascinating and often moving journey through British data-gathering from Domesday Book right up to modern day debates about ethics * Significance *

Author Information

Georgina Sturge is a Statistician at the House of Commons Library. Prior to working at Parliament, she trained in quantitative public policy analysis at the United Nations University and Maastricht University Graduate School of Governance. She has worked in global development, international migration, social security, poverty and inequality. She is a member of the Office for National Statistics' expert advisory group on population and migration statistics and an advisor to the University of Oxford's Migration Observatory. Her first book was Bad Data: How Governments, Politicians and the Rest of us Get Misled by Numbers.

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