Economy & Finance breakfast in videoconference with Olivier Martin, Director of CERLIS-CNRS

How numbers rule our daily lives

(Analysis of L'empire des chiffres, Olivier Martin's latest book, in variances.eu: https: //www.ensae.org/fr/news/entretien-avec-olivier-martin-1990-autour-de-son-ouvrage-l-empire-des-chiffres-est-verrouille-entretien-avec-olivier-martin-1990-autour-de-son-ouvrage-l-empire-des-chiffres-2838

"how numbers rule our everyday lives

Numbers govern a large part of our lives: they are used to coordinate our actions, establish rules for living together and define various collective agreements. In these times of coronavirus, they flood the media, particularly to find out whether the virus is spreading, whether the number of infected people is rising or falling, and whether hospital resuscitation beds are becoming more or less crowded. Does the power of figures lie in their ability to state certainties that are taken as intangible, or in their capacity to offer us levers for debate and action?

Through a sociological and historical analysis of quantification, Olivier Martin shows us, in his latest book, "L'empire des chiffres" (published by Armand Colin, Sept. 2020), the weight that numbers and figures impose on our daily lives. On Friday May 21, he will share with us his research and convictions on the subject.

An alumnus of ENSAE (class of 1990) and EHESS, Olivier Martin, sociologist and statistician, is a professor at the University of Paris and heads the Centre de recherche sur les liens sociaux (CERLIS-CNRS).

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