ABSTRACT
Colin Clark’s most important contribution has undoubtedly been to economic statistics. He showed us, so to speak, how to play with statistics: how to mix statistics that were firm with statistics that were far from firm by means of a little speculative arithmetic and arrive at conclusions of major importance in resolving issues of economic policy. He opened up a world of the past in which one could still think in magnitudes when the quantitative data were fragmentary and uncertain, building the bricks of economic history out of straws in the wind. At the same time he helped to revolutionize governmental use of statistics for current policy by encouraging the estimation of economic aggregates, recognizing that the pitfalls of such estimations were much the same as those involved in piecing together the statistical fragments of past centuries.
