“幸福指数”有用吗？

“Happiness is important. Statistics are useful. Therefore, statistics about happiness are important and useful. The logic of this implicit argument certainly doesn’t stand up. (Sex is important. Coffee mugs are useful. Are coffee mugs about sex therefore important and useful?)

“幸福很重要，统计数据很有用。因此，关于幸福的统计数据不但重要而且有用。这种隐含观点的推导逻辑显然站不住脚。（性很重要，咖啡杯很有用，那么关于性的咖啡杯就是重要和有用的吗？）

The idea of collecting statistics on wellbeing deserves the benefit of the doubt. I worry, though, that every new wellbeing report from the Office for National Statistics just deepens that doubt. This latest is a grab-bag of statistics: income, job satisfaction, carbon monoxide levels. Some are collected by the ONS and some are not. There seems to be no serious analysis.

搜集幸福数据这种想法是好是坏，人们还是暂不下定论为好。不过，我恐怕，英国国家统计局(Office for National Statistics)发布的每一篇新的关于幸福的报告，只会加重人们的疑虑。最新报告是统计数据大杂烩：收入、就业满意度、一氧化碳水平。其中部分数据由英国国家统计局搜集，有些则不是。国家统计局似乎没有对数据进行任何认真的分析。

The?aim, then, is presumably communication. This is awkward; communication?is?really?not the ONS’s strong point. The report makes much of a vague visual similarity between the path of life satisfaction and real household actual income, or RHAI. Type that into the ONS website, and the top five results are all in Welsh, headed by a report titled “O’r gegin i ganolfan brosesu’r cyfrifiad.

那么，他们发布报告的目的大概是为了交流。这令人尴尬；交流真的不是英国国家统计局的强项。这份报告过分关注生活满意度与家庭实际收入(RHAI)之间似是而非的关联。在英国国家统计局网站上搜索RHAI，前5项结果全是用威尔士语写就的报告，第一个报告的名称是“O’r gegin i ganolfan brosesu’r cyfrifiad。

On the plus side,?the?ONS has created the “National Well-Being Interactive Wheel of Measures, an animation that allows you to view lots of apparently arbitrary statistics. According to this, carbon emissions fell by an impressive 7 per cent between 2010 and 2011. Why, you might ask? A warmer winter, perhaps. The National Well-Being Interactive Wheel of Measures isn’t saying.

从积极的方面说，英国国家统计局创造了“国民福祉互动指标轮(National Well-Being Interactive Wheel of Measures)——这是一个图解，可以让你查看大量明显杂乱无章的统计数据。从该图解可以看出，在2010年到2011年期间，二氧化碳排放量大幅下降了7%。你可能会问怎么下降这么多？或许是因为冬天变暖和了吧。“国民福祉互动指标轮没有给出原因。

Good statistics are so indispensable, and so cheap relative to the cost of flying blind, that the ONS needs to clear a low hurdle to justify what it does. Yet here, it is stumbling.

好的统计数据不可或缺，与全无头绪相比能节约大量成本，因此英国国家统计局需要克服一些小障碍，来说明它的工作是有意义的。然而在这一点上，目前它显得笨手笨脚。