The Statistical Gaze: The British Census
Helen McCarthy, 29 June 2017
About 15 years ago, when I was renting my first flat in London, a man from the Office for National Statistics paid me a call. A letter had arrived a week earlier informing me that my postcode had been randomly selected for the annual General Household Survey and that I could expect a visit. My interrogator was in his mid-fifties, tall, well-spoken, and wearing a long dark overcoat which...