JOHN GRAUNT: BIOGRAPHY AND CONTRIBUTIONS - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

John Graunt (1620-1674) was a statistician of English origin who paved the way for the development of this science. He is considered the first demographer and his investigations based on observations of mortality data led to the promotion of the study of other sciences.

Having inherited the family business from his father and having been a merchant allowed him to be socially outstanding and respected, reaching various positions in his community and, at the same time, having access to relevant data on the birth and mortality of the London population, information which he used to develop his observations.

The scientific statistics that interprets data, relates and interprets varied phenomena, had its foundations in the path opened by “Captain John Graunt”, the nickname by which he was known.

He dedicated himself to relating biological phenomena that occurred en masse, such as birth or death, with the observation of social behaviors and quantitative data.

He was able to do all this with the dedicated and entertaining observation he made in his spare time of the bills of mortality, to which he had access thanks to his various relationships and social activities in his city, London.

He related the biological phenomena from numerical data as statistics do today, a science that studies the methods that allow collecting, organizing, presenting and analyzing data of some nature in order to make deductions and conclusions, in order to finally be able to take concrete decisions.

Biography

John Graunt was born in London, England, on April 24, 1620, and was the first descendant of Henry and Mary Graunt.

Since he was the son of a cloth merchant, the family economy was very austere and of priorities; however, he was baptized under the Christian faith and was educated within the possibilities of the family, receiving institutionalized and solid formation.

Studies

Until the age of 16, he obtained a formal education and later became part of the family business, serving as an apprentice. In that period he was promoted and held positions of greater responsibility relatively quickly.

Despite not having done higher studies, he became part of the Council of Burgesses and later obtained the title of Major Captain in the urban militias for about 3 years; that is to say, it can be said that Graunt participated actively in the cultural, political and social life of London.

Inconsistencies regarding faith

Some sources indicate that his life was full of ups and downs and that in his maturity he was not financially stable. In the midst of this context, he carried out various actions that were not consistent with the Christian faith under which he was instructed and whose precepts he followed during the first years of his life.

At one point in his life he was associated with the Socinians (a current that denies the divinity of Christ) and later converted to Catholicism. Taking into account the evidently Protestant bent of English society, this meant a significant reduction in the speed with which he was rising socially and politically.

These setbacks in his life were accompanied by situations that, it seemed, were difficult to overcome. One of the most devastating events was the great fire that struck London in 1666, an incident in which he lost the establishment where he worked.

Graunt had a hard time rebuilding it. His friend William Petty - an English physician, economist, philosopher, and statesman who was with him for much of Graunt's life and even published part of his work based on his observations - tried to help him with this endeavor; however, it never fully recovered economically.

In this same context of bad experiences, the friendship with Petty also declined, as a result of all the financial problems that Graunt had, as well as the greater burden of responsibilities that were overwhelming him.

Favorable access to information

Due to his multiple relationships in his community given his work as a merchant and for demonstrating easy social management, Graunt had access to the information contained in the bulletins compiled by the company of parish sacristans.

These data were related to the baptisms to be celebrated - and, therefore, births - and also to the deaths - namely, the deaths that were delivered in the parishes because they were necessary for burials. There they appeared the data of births and deaths in London of the time, including the causes of the deaths.

All this information was essential so that John Graunt could dedicate himself to an efficient observation of these phenomena and, from there, develop his statistical work, which was so important and transcendent for future generations.

Death

After a time of long hardships and instabilities of faith, John Graunt died on April 18, 1674, succumbed to poverty. His remains rest in the church of St. Dunstan in the East, located in London.

Contributions

Frequency tables

Among his most important contributions, his analysis of the data contained in the mortality bulletins of his parish stands out in the first place.

As mentioned above, Graunt used this data by transforming it into tables, which implied that he became responsible for initiating the formal demography.

This action meant the establishment of the bases for statistics and the discovery of patterns, which led to the establishment of laws of behavior of the data and hypotheses related to the results obtained.

From his observations, Graunt built what is called frequency tables, although at that time they were not called this way.

These tables contained rather incomplete data on how many people died in a given period and the sex of the deceased; However, through mathematical operations Graunt was able to deduce other more specific data, such as the age of the deceased.

Controversy over the data

Especially in the demographers' guild, the controversy still seems to exist as to how Graunt obtained this data: whether he invented it or obtained it using more sophisticated formulas as a constant, thus establishing that there was exponential growth.

In this sense, the value of Graunt's contribution is the fact that it has allowed itself to transform the world view from the manipulation of quantitative data with the intention of knowing how the phenomena behave.

This paradigm shift meant a transformation of many processes, the product of a more accurate and efficient analysis.

For example, these statistics provided vital information on the crisis situation generated by the epidemics at the end of the 16th century.

This was essential not only to understand the fact -the diseases-, but also to establish epidemiological criteria and identify the causes of mortality, the rates of monogamy, the prevalent ages and the number of women, men and children that made up the total population of London, among other very useful values.

Background of descriptive statistics

Descriptive statistics tries to describe the variables that occur in the samples in a random way. This is what Graunt did intuitively.

With his raw data and the scientific resources he had, Graunt was able to establish certain results such as the mortality rate, a concept of advanced for the time. Since he used scientific elements, he also introduced a new technique.

Contributions to inferential statistics

In addition to the above, Graunt also laid the foundations for inferential statistics, by manipulating the data that allows establishing laws of behavior from the use of the inductive method, thus reinforcing the development of science and technology.

Mortality studies

The compilation of his observations in his book Observations of the Mortality Bulletins led the scientific community to be interested in his finding and asked him to do a more detailed and extensive study of infant mortality.

Thanks to this request, the book Political and Natural Observations made from the Mortality Bulletins was generated, which developed a report that generated much pleasure in Carlos III, who admitted it to the Royal Society of Philosophers, an important intellectual group for the time in English society.

In this work, Graunt treated the phenomena in a particularly novel way, and new terms emerged to identify and give force to the constructs that are developed in that publication for the first time.

New concepts

Among the concepts that were developed, those of mortality and morbidity and their causes (which at that time in history were abundant due to the plague), as well as the relationships with seasonal fertility and health, stand out.

Similarly, Graunt made it possible to establish population growth projections - fundamental for the new science of demography -, structured the behavior of the quantitative pattern by sex and was able to obtain relevant data that denoted the differences between London and other cities in England..

This possibility of disseminating his work and his works allowed other European countries to begin to align themselves with and become interested in these same needs, which implied the development of a more rigorous approach to the causes of the different situations that impact demographically, which of course it also had political implications.

References

1. Mazur, Dennis J. (2016). "Analyzing and interpreting" imperfect "Big Data in the 1600s". Retrieved on December 1, 2018 from SAGE Journals, Vol 3 issue 1: doi.org
2. Halley, Mr. E. (1693). “An estimate of the degrees of the mortality of mankind; drawn from curious tables of the births and funerals at the city of Breslaw; with an attempt to ascertain the price of annuities upon lives ”. Retrieved on December 1, 2018 from Trans. vol. 17no. 196 596-610: royalsocietypublishing.org
3. Moreno, V. Ramírez, M, De la Oliva, Cristian. and Moreno, E. (2018) "Biography of John Graunt". Retrieved on December 1 from the Bancaja Foundation Cyber ​​Library: ciberoteca.com
4. Pérez de Vargas, A. Abraira. V. (1996). "Biostatistics". Retrieved on December 1, 2018 from Editorial Universitaria Ramón Areces: cerasa.es
5. García González, M. (2011) “Political and natural observations made from the mortality bulletins”. Retrieved on December 1, 2018 at Academia: academia.edu