This month I’m experimenting with the addition of more of my personal experience in The Matter on Fact essay. I’m writing about the 2010 United States census. Yes, we did research on “the census past”, but, in this essay I will reveal my path to being selected as an enumerator for the 2010 effort!! I also get to make note of one of the world’s first female mathematics geniuses, which, as my dear friend Gloria Feldt pointed out to me after last month’s essay would have been an excellent subject for an essay just on her. March is Women’s History Month; and Gloria ... I wish I had written about women so we all systemically remember the importance of the marking of women’s contributions to society.
The first census, which almost all of us know has an ambition of counting every person in the country was in 1790. There were only 6 questions asked. From the “get go” the census was used to set the level of congressional seats for each state. The original “one” was also used to set the percentage of the war debt each state would pay. The hoped for result was to “keep the people honest” and not “pad” their totals.
The etymology of the word census shows it comes from the Latin and means (literally) “to tax”. Egypt conducted a census as long ago as 3,000 years.
By 1810 the U.S. Census Department began to include questions on other issues. There was now a manufacturing census as well as on agriculture, mining, housing, local government, general commerce and business. By 1840 the census had ballooned from just 6 to 90 questions. In 1850 a national census office was created and one’s original nationality and birthplace (more on this later) was queried.
During the middle decades of the 19th century the concept of automated tallying became popular. Charles Babbage with his “difference machine” was building the conceptual construct for today’s modern computer. This four part concept ... the mill (CPU), the store (memory and storage) ... the reader and the printer (input and output devices) were all totally analogous to our modern electronic system. Babbage’s key protégé was Ada Byron, Lord Byron’s daughter. She wrote in 1843 about this “wonderful machine’s” eventual future abilities to compose complex music and produce graphics as well as being used for practical as well as scientific usages. It was not until 1890 that we used a computational device and a “real computer” was first used (UNIVAC) in 1950.
Almost 900,000 people will work on this census, and as of this writing I will be one of them (although I will step down before it starts ... more on that later). There could not be a better time for these (close to) one million jobs and they didn’t even need the stimulus package to be created.
On several occasions the census data has been “used” to identify people of interest to the government. Even though the census data is to be totally confidential the third law of data dynamics says otherwise. This law states ... “information produced for one purpose will be used for other purposes and eventually will cause harm to those who supplied the information”.
All you have to do is ask (or study) the southerners in the path of Sherman’s march to the sea, the Japanese interns in the 1940’s or individuals who self identified themselves as Egyptian, Iraqi, Jordanian, Lebanese, Moroccan, Palestinian, Syrian, Arabic or “other Arab” in the 2000 census to hear stories about how their personal data was used for purposes outside the scope of the confidential census.
So, my wife said I should apply for a census job having seen a piece about it in our local paper. I thought this would be a great experiment and maybe could result in some magazine article. I signed up to take “the test”.
I went to the census website and took the practice test. I figure: ... I’m smart ... I’m educated ... how hard could this be? You have to answer 28 questions in 30 minutes, when you take the real test (as well as in the practice one). When I “graded” my practice test I get 7 questions wrong!! That’s like getting a “C”.
Of course it would help if one was not as smug as I was about how well I could do on this test. Come to think about it, I did “prepare” before the written drivers test.
When I took the “real” test I get 27 out of 28 correct. However, the other 14 people taking the test get none wrong. So, if they graded on a curve I’d have flunked!! I couldn’t help myself ... I asked he proctor how many questions one had to have correct to be considered for a job? ... She said ... ten!!
I was selected to become an enumerator. I have decided to “stand down” because as much as I could use some “do-ray-me” right now ... a job like this would really help a family that needs the money a lot more than I do.
So, no, it will not be me knocking on your door. Plus, it took me so long to get my fingerprints out of the “system” I didn’t want to give ‘em back!!
Have a great month.
W2
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