ABSTRACT
Among the most basic tools of elementary statistics, percentages, averages and statistical tables readily come to mind. This chapter explores the process of conceptual extent of percentages to various domains and through various paths. It is generally agreed that percentages were first used in the fields of finance and commerce, and primarily for the purpose of computing interest. The chapter first examines the work of early English political arithmeticians such as John Graunt and William Petty, and then moves to a North American British colony, Lower Canada, and considers a few works that illustrate the emergence of a properly statistical point of view there. The chapter also considers early nineteenth-century England, at the time of the Malthusian controversy and of the first British censuses. By the early nineteenth century, percentages began to be used currently to assess population growth and, from there, to describe or compare the behaviour of any phenomenon amenable to quantification.
