The concept of “statistical awareness” appears frequently in official statistical publications and strategic planning by Egyptian statistical officials. Indeed “spreading statistical awareness” (Arabic: nashr al-wa’i al-ihsa`i) among the general population is a legally required task of the Egyptian statistical agency. This paper traces the history of “statistical awareness” as a policy target of Egyptian and international officials, arguing that this term’s changing meaning over time reveals changes in the political economy of statistical production and the relationship between the citizen and the state. Using official and expert documents gathered during field research in Egypt, in Arabic and English, I show that in the mid-20th century “statistical awareness” emerged to mean the degree of familiarity of respondents with survey techniques, and figured in efforts to avoid nonresponse bias and coding errors in official surveys. It concerned the degree to which measured populations can perform as reliable objects of statistical measurement in the rapidly expanding statistical activities of the state in the (ostensibly) planned economy. I then show that the term has subsequently shifted in meaning to include the degree of familiarity of the non-expert population with the official data itself and the extent to which official data has become part of daily life. “Statistically aware” citizens are now expected not only to be able to complete surveys reliably, but also to cite statistical data and to reason with such figures in their relations with others in society and with the state. The evolution of “statistical awareness” in Egypt and internationally thus marks a shift from the official conception of the population as objects of statistical measurement to a population which is also interpellated as subjects of statistical reasoning. I argue that changes in the meaning of this term reveal deeper changes in the relationship between official statistical agencies and populations in the context of the evolving political economy of statistical production. Through an examination of the different uses of this term by various factions within the Egyptian official statistical apparatus, I specifically argue that this change is related to the Egyptian – and broader global - shift from centralized economic policy based on planning and public-sector industry, to an economy oriented toward private investment and market mechanisms. The paper will provide insight into the role of Egypt in the development of the international statistical discourse, as well as into the changing qualitative social relationship with quantitative information.