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First Sunday Mark Coleman |
COLLAGE BY BRYANT FUKUTOMI / BFUKUTOMI@STARBULLETIN.COM
PHOTO BY CRAIG KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COMHawaii’s Facts Man
Here's a coincidence: The man who wrote (with Ronn Ronck) the 1995 book "First and Almost Firsts In Hawaii" -- Robert C. Schmitt -- is himself a Hawaii first. Known by some as "Mr. Data," Schmitt was Hawaii's first state statistician. He is probably best known for creating the annual State of Hawaii Data Book, which he compiled and edited for years until retiring as director of the state Data Center in 1992.
As state statistician, Schmitt was always generous in providing the latest historical data about virtually any topic pertaining to Hawaii. Now enjoying retirement, he continues to be helpful to researchers and even still helps occasionally with the State Data Book. He also serves on the editorial board of the Hawaiian Journal of History, published by the Hawaiian Historical Society, which in 1992, its centennial, named him a "Distinguished Historian." In 2000, then-Gov. Ben Cayetano declared Dec. 15 "Robert C. Schmitt Day."
A native of Ohio, Schmitt moved to Hawaii in 1947. He had been working on his doctorate in public health statistics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor when he decided to forego his Ph.D. and accept a job as a statistician with the Chamber of Commerce of Honolulu. He later spent a few years in Seattle before returning to Hawaii.
Considered an expert on "firsts" in Hawaii, Schmitt has written more than 200 articles for technical and professional journals, while books he has written or co-written include "Missionary Censuses of Hawaii" (1973), "Historical Statistics of Hawaii (1978), "Hawaii in the Movies: 1898-1959" (1988), "The Peopling of Hawaii" (1989), and, of course, "Firsts and Almost Firsts in Hawaii" (1995).
He lives in a book-filled, 16th-floor apartment off Wilder Avenue in Makiki.
CRAIG KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM "The 1884 census ... indicates that Chinatown had the smallest percent of the population of Chinese origin." -- Robert C. Schmitt, former state statistician
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Talking statistics with
Robert C. SchmittTrivia master, somewhat
Mark Coleman: Are you good at trivia?Robert Schmitt: (Laughs) Well, I sometimes seem to be involved in settling disputes.
MC: Have you ever seen that TV show called "Jan Ken Po"?
RS: No.
MC: It's kind of like a Hawaii trivia game. Some of the questions actually are kind of complicated, but I bet if you were sitting there watching it, you'd be going, "I know that! I know that!"
RS: I have a fair amount of miscellaneous information.
MC: That's reflected in the many articles you've written, such as "Early Hawaiian Bridges," "Two Centuries of Eye Care in Hawaii," "Hawaii's Beers and Brewers" and so on. How do you decide what to write about?
RS: Mostly it's something I encounter a lack of data on, so I start getting more interested in it and eventually wind up putting together a paper.
MC: I noticed that a lot of your articles in The Hawaiian Journal of History have been about "firsts" in Hawaii. Was that how your book "Firsts and Almost Firsts in Hawaii" (edited by Ronn Ronck) evolved?
RS: Yeah, I eventually filled in a lot of the pukas.
Hawaii in film
MC: What about your book "Hawaii in the Movies: 1898-1959"? How did that come about?
RS: My interest, I suppose, went back to my earliest childhood. My father back in the '20s was an organist in a silent-movie house.
MC: So was my grandfather.
RS: Ahhh. Well, my father, who was born in 1893, played the organ, as I say, and I can still remember how my mother would take me along on her shopping trips to downtown Cincinnati and she would drop me off at the Gift's Opera House, which was the name of the theater that he played at, so he would be baby-sitting me, in effect. He'd be sitting at the console of the mighty Wurlitzer and I would be sitting behind in the first row and seeing this enormous screen up in front of me. I developed quite a keen interest in silent movies at that time. And then, around 1930, the theater played its last performance of a silent picture, so he became unemployed and I was his chief deduction.
MC: (Laughs)
RS: It's been a while.
Robert C. Schmitt's "Firsts and Almost Firsts in Hawaii," written with editor Ronn Ronck
Always helpful
MC: I think I first met you back when I was at Pacific Business News, probably about 20 years ago. I was always impressed by how helpful you were to anyone seeking information.RS: Well, it's part of my job.
MC: It also seemed like you always tried to convey the idea of uncertainty regarding everything that you worked with.
RS: Especially statistics.
MC: Yes. I took a statistics course at the University of Hawaii and one of the books we had to read was by (physicist Werner) Heisenberg on the uncertainty principle.
RS: Ah hah!
MC: I would have to say that your exchange several years ago with David Stannard (a UH professor of American history who wrote "Before the Horror: The Population of Hawaii on the Eve of Western Contact") reminded me of that principle. The question was how many Hawaiians were here at the time of Western contact.
RS: That's essentially unknowable. A lot of the recorded information compiled by Capt. Cook and his successors is very limited, very insufficient for that purpose. Have you seen the latest article on the pre-contact population of Hawaii by Tom Dye?
MC: No.
RS: Well, Dye, an archaeologist, has written several articles on the subject. ... He makes an estimate far below others.
MC: Below your 300,000?
RS: Much below that: 150,000.
MC: But how can you go from 150,000 -- or even 300,000 -- to 800,000 or a million (as Stannard did)? Do you remember how Stannard made that leap?
RS: Well, Stannard actually doesn't use a formal methodology. He is fairly unsystematic and ...
MC: Anecdotal?
RS: Yeah.
MC: Speaking of population, you wrote a book called "Missionary Censuses of Hawaii." Did you consider the missionaries to be pretty good census takers?
RS: Probably better than many of the official government enumerators.
The 'curious' census
MC: One of your latest articles was called "The Curious 1884 Census of Health and Fire Wards in Honolulu." What was curious about it?
RS: Well, the 1884 census was a victim of a severe attrition in money, so it was done pretty sloppily. But one thing that surprised me in looking at that census was that the 1884 census was only the second one issued in which small-area statistics were included.
MC: What do you mean "small area"?
RS: Well, the equivalent of a census tract or something equally small.
MC: Like Palolo or something?
RS: Yeah. So you look at the data published in the 1884 census, and it indicates that Chinatown had the smallest percent of the population of Chinese origin of any of the dozen districts that had published data.
MC: What ethnicities were more dominant in that area?
RS: There were a lot of haoles there, and a lot of Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians and so on. But it was just topsy-turvy. It was the opposite of what you would expect. And, oddly, nobody seems to have noticed that at the time.
One of the annual Hawaii State Data Books edited by Schmitt.
In the beginning ...
MC: Why did you become a statistician?RS: I was interested in public health statistics.
MC: What brought you to Hawaii?
RS: A job. The Chamber of Commerce of Honolulu had a unit called the Public Health Committee, and they needed a statistician. Their previous statistician had resigned.
MC: What were you doing before you came to Hawaii?
RS: I was at the University of Michigan working on a doctorate, which I never finished.
MC: So how did you hear about the Hawaii job?
RS: The job was advertised; they had a notice pinned to the bulletin board at school that the job was open. I applied, was accepted, came out to the islands and remained here ever since. Well, not entirely, actually. From 1949 to 1952 I was at the Seattle City Planning Commission.
MC: What brought you back to Hawaii?
RS: It was very wet and miserable in Seattle.
MC: Did you have a job offer back in Hawaii?
RS: I came back on vacation, actually, and immediately saw my old friends at the Chamber. I got a job at the Honolulu Redevelopment Agency initially and found myself up to my ears in housing statistics. From there I went to the Territorial Planning Office. Remember when things were "territorial"? The territorial government became the state government, of course, and later I started up the State of Hawaii Data Book.
MC: That was a great book, year after year.
RS: You can see the stack of them over there (pointing to a bookshelf in his living room). Every one of those was mine.
The joy of research
MC: Where do you do your research? Do you spend time at the Hawaii State Library?RS: Some at the state library, much of it in the library of the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism.
MC: Does the Hawaiian Historical Society have a good library?
RS: Excellent.
MC: Who's got the best research library, locally?
RS: Well, I find just about every department in state government has some sort of research activity.
MC: Do you rely on the Internet much?
RS: No.
MC: No? Don't you feel left behind? Because that means you have to travel more, to drive to these libraries, park ...
RS: Well, when I worked downtown, the only real travel I would do would be to the university (UH) libraries.
A busy retirement
MC: Why did you retire (in 1992)?RS: I worked until I was 70, and I was beginning to get tired at that point, so I retired.
MC: You put in a long time at that job.
RS: Yeah, I started in 1963; that's when I got the title as state statistician, under Gov. (John) Burns.
MC: Were you the first state statistician?
RS: Yeah.
MC: How did you convince them to set that up as an official post?
RS: Well, the position was established by John Burns early in his tenure as governor. I happened to know John from the early '50s. He was really the driving force behind this thing. He had a great deal of respect for statisticians and economists and such. I'll never forget how one day in 1963 I was having lunch at Charlie's Arcade, next door to Hawaiian Electric. Anyhow, I was having lunch there, and chatting with the guy on the next stool, and John Burns walked right into the dining area and came up to me and said he was going to establish this post and he wanted me to serve on it. Then he turned around and walked out. And I was flabbergasted.
MC: (Laughs) That's great. And how many days was it after that before you went to work?
RS: Well, I was already in the job, working for the department (the state Department of Planning and Economic Development).
MC: How have you been spending your days since you retired?
RS: I've been doing some writing. I just completed an article called "A Brief Statistical History of Hawaii." Part of it is about statistics in the classroom. It turns out nobody had written anything on the history of teaching statistics in Hawaii. In 1924, there was just one course, two hours a week, that was given at UH. Now we have 45 or 50 or something like that, requiring statistical background.
The next generation
MC: Do you have any favorite statisticians?RS: Probably for census statistics you'd want to talk to Jan Nakamoto, who is in charge of the state Data Center.
MC: Is she basically your successor?
RS: Well, when it comes to government statistics, yes. However, I was a bit of an oddball. I was interested in a lot of things besides the government statistics -- census data, that sort of thing -- and I don't know if Jan has that interest.
MC: What would you recommend for somebody who wanted to be a statistician?
RS: Well, probably, if you have at least a master's degree and preferably a doctorate, you could go to the state government's personnel services and ask them about it. That's probably the best bet.
MC: What about large companies, such as brokerages or banks?
RS: Well, for example, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, they used to have a marketing person who did their surveys.
MC: Surveying involves statistics?
RS: Oh yeah. Survey research implies statistics, with sample data and so on.
MC: Well, now that you mention it, one of my projects in graduate school was to develop a scientifically valid readership survey for a free-circulation, bi-weekly newspaper (Sunbums). The main challenge was to assure randomness.
RS: There's all kinds of problems with surveying. I did some articles for The Journal of Marketing and (randomness) was a subject we touched on from time to time.
MC: Another problem with surveys is honesty. Some people will just flat-out lie to you.
RS: That is a problem with all statistics.
MC: What kind of statistics do you think are the most reliable?
RS: Oh, things like water supply.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
Mark Coleman's conversations with people who have had an impact on our community appear on the first Sunday of every month. If you have a comment or suggestion, please send it to mcoleman@starbulletin.com.
