“The Cabinet Ministers, the army of their subordinates . . . have for the most part received a university education, but no education in statistical method. We legislate without knowing what we are doing. The War Office has some of the finest statistics in the world. What comes of them? Little or nothing. Why? Because the Heads do not know how to make anything of them. Our Indian statistics are really better than those of England. Of these no use is made in administration. What we want is not so much (or at least not at present) an accumulation of facts, as to teach men who are to govern the country the use of statistical facts.”
Florence Nightingale in a letter to Benjamin Jowett, from Kopf, E. W. (1916). Florence Nightingale as statistician. Publications of the American Statistical Association, 15(116), 388–404.