Census Tragics

I very much fear that I am what a colleague called census tragics. You know, people who get sucked into trawling through census data looking for interesting information.

In my case the disease began early. I found the Australian year books and spent many a happy hour chasing obscure facts. Then it got worse because I found the international year books. Perhaps there was something that I could have taken at the time.`

Now, with blogging, I have entered the terminal stage of the illness, the desire to inflict my discoveries on others, to share with you all those absolutely fascinating pieces of information I have found. You can identify those in this stage from the glazed eyes of those around them.

The real tragic, and I have entered this stage, is the fascination that arises when you start finding apparent errors in the data. Why is it, I wonder, that there appear to be more speakers of one Aboriginal language in a statistical unit near Blacktown (a Sydney suburb) than in the whole country combined including that unit?

My family has worked out how to cope. Say yes dear or yes dad and proceed with what you are doing regardless. Its much harder for those who feel bound to be polite!

Ah well. There are just a few more things I need to check this morning. So back to it.