At present missionary statistics are untrustworthy mainly because so few people use them, and consequently those who supply them do not feel the need of revising them carefully.
Furthermore, it is important to bear in mind that the field for estimate in statistics of the kind proposed is limited; it only embraces figures for which exact totals are unobtainable, for instance, area, population, and figures of societies which refuse to give statistics, etc., and in every case precision in these statistics is not of vital importance.
(iii) The main difference between our tables and those of others is that we make them very small and express in each a relation.

The figures supplied by the societies in their reports are seldom related to anything; they are mere bundles of sticks; we suggest the introduction of a relation into every table which gives to each figure a significance which by itself it does not possess.

In our tables every figure is set to work.

Our idea of missionary statistics demands that they should be a basis for action.

We think that it is waste of time to collect statistics from which no conclusion can be certainly drawn both by the compiler and the reader--a conclusion which ought to be suggestive when taken alone by itself, and, when considered in relation to the conclusions suggested by similar tables, compelling.
But it may be said that we are adding to the already overwhelming burden of accounts and reports over which missionaries toil to the great detriment of their proper work.