Federal Statistics in a Complex Environment: The Case of the 1980 Census

The taking and the interpretation of something as big and as complicated as the national census is more than an exercise in statistical thinking.It involves other diverse fields such as ethics, epistemology, law, and politics.This article shows that a national census is more akin to so-called ill-structured problems.Unlike well-structured problems, the formulation of an ill-structured problem varies from field to field and from person to person, and the various aspects of an ill-structured problem (i.e., ethics, epistemology, etc.) cannot be clearly separated from one another.The 1980 census is discussed as an ill-structured problem, and a method for treating such problems is presented, within which statistical information is only one component.