ABSTRACT
Yet, playing on the image of the village bell with its regular pealing which regulates and coordinates the life of the community, this title with its double entendre reminds us that statistics is not only, as a branch of mathematics, a tool of proof, but that it is also a tool of governance, ordering and coordinating many social activities and serving as a guide for public action. As a general rule, the two aspects are handled by people of different specializations, whose backgrounds and interests are far apart. Thus, mathematicians develop the formalisms based on the probability theory and on inferential statistics, while the political scientist and sociologist are interested in the applications of statistics for public action, and there are even some who speak of “governing by indicators” (Lascoumes and Le Galès 2004). The two areas of interest are rarely dealt with jointly. The phrase “For Whom the Bell Curves” invites us to historicize and to sociologize the study of statistical tools, their technical aspects and their utilization
as arguments. Often perceived by the social scientists as unwieldy (albeit indispensable), these tools are generally subcontracted to well-respected methodologists who are requested to deliver incontrovertible, reliable, ready-made algorithms.
