Irish Examiner view: Hard statistics by which we measure our lives

At the outset of another year, we mull over gloomy data on housing road deaths 

The number of homeless people in the State now stands at almost 17,000, including 5,321 children. Picture: iStock

In his polymathic work, The Vertigo of Lists, Italian historian Umberto Eco speculated on the human appetite for assembling data and making it comprehensible. 

The example chosen to illustrate his point is Homer’s catalogue of ships from the opening of The Iliad.