WILLIAM PETTY JOHN GRAUNT

Sir William Petty FRS (Romsey, 26 May 1620 - 16 December 1687) who was
an English economist works along with John Graunt (24 April 1620 -18 April 1674)
who was also an economist.
Graunt, along with William Petty, developed early human statistical and census
methods that later provided a framework for modern demography. He is credited with
producing the first life table, giving probabilities of survival to each age. Graunt is also
considered as one of the first experts in epidemiology, since his famous book was
concerned mostly with public health statistics.

According to Graunt, the recording of the London statistics "first began in the
year 1592, being a time of great Mortality; and after some disuse, were resumed
again in the year 1603, after the great Plague then happening likewise. These bills
were Printed and Published, not only every week on Thursday, but also a general
[account] of the whole Year was given in, upon the Thursday before Christmas Day.
Graunt studied the statistics compiled in the Bills of Mortality, along with christening
records from churches and data from an area of rural England. A practical man, he
decided that these carefully collected facts could be analyzed and the results put into
book form. On February 5, 1662, Graunt's newly-printed 90-page
work, Observations, was distributed to the members in attendance at a meeting of
England's Royal Society.

Graunt had grouped together similar facts from the 70 years of records
displayed in the Bills, and noted the comparisons of findings for different population
groups. From his studies he drew a number of interesting and important conclusions.
Graunt modestly described his own work as "to have reduced several great confused
volumes [of Bills of Mortality] into a few [easy to understand] Tables, and abridged
such Observations as naturally flowed from them, into a few succinct Paragraphs,
without any long series of [wordy] Deductions."

In a 1996 article in the British medical journal Lancet, Kenneth J. Rothman

pointed out some of Graunt's major achievements as a pioneer demographer:
Graunt was the first to publish the fact that more boys than girls are born but that the
mortality rate is greater for males, resulting in the population's being almost evenly
divided between males and females. Graunt reported the first time-trends for many
diseases; he offered the first well reasoned estimate of London's population; he used
evidence from medical records to refute the idea that plague spreads by contagion
and that it occurs early during the reign of a new king; he showed that doctors have
twice as many female as male patients, but that males die earlier than females; he
produced early hard evidence about the frequencies of various causes of death.

The invention that some historians have called Graunt's most original was his
creation of "life tables"a new way to present population and mortality statistics by
calculating survivorship on a chart. Using this method Graunt was able to predict the
number of persons who would survive to each successive age on his chart and the
life expectancy of the groups from year to year. Development of the life tables has
been hailed as marking the beginning of the science of demography. Such charts are
said to have made an impact on the pioneer demographic work of other noted
astronomers and scientists, including Edmund Halley (1656-1742), England's
astronomer royal. The types of charts Graunt originated remain in use today.

The widspread acceptance of Graunt's work also led to his being acclaimed as
the founder of the science of statistics, particularly the branch that deals with the
analysis of population data. Yet Graunt never made a formal study of mathematics.
Some historians have speculated that Graunt received more help with his book from
his better-educated friend, William Petty (1623-1687), than is generally
acknowledged. However, while Petty surely offered support to his friend and
probably made some contribution to the book, most historians agree that Graunt
wrote at least a major portion of the work.

Graunt's book on the Bills of Mortality had great influence throughout Europe.
It has been noted that soon after its publication, France embarked on the most
precise registering of births and deaths in all of Europe. The publication also caused
Charles II of England to endorse Graunt's being made one of the early members of
the then newly-established and prestigious Royal Society, a distinct honor for
someone who was a businessman and not a professional scientist. Charles
requested of the society "that if they found any more such tradesmen, they should be
sure to admit them all, without any more ado."

Petty's only statistical technique is the use of simple averages. He would not be
a statistician by today's standards but during his time a statistician was merely one
that employed the use of quantitative data. Because obtaining census data was
difficult, if not impossible, especially for Ireland, he applied methods of estimation. The
way in which he would estimate the population would be to start with estimating the
population of London. He would do this by either estimating it by exports or by deaths.
His method of using exports is by considering that a 30 percent increase in exports
corresponds to a similar proportionate increase in population. The way he would use
deaths would be by multiplying the number of deaths by 30 estimating that one out
of thirty people die each year. To obtain the population of all of England he would
multiply the population of London by 8. Such a simple use of estimation could have
easily have been abused and Petty was accused more than once of doctoring the
figures for the Crown.