Tutorial 2: Evaluating Primary Sources

Quantitative history

Since the dawn of history as a discipline, historians have made use of numerical data (e.g. ship lists and temple records) in writing history. But it has only been since the invention of computers and statistical software that quantitative history has come into its own.

Using Excel spreadsheets or the SPSS statistical package, historians have applied quantitative techniques to a wide variety of historical problems, like changing household structure in 19th century America or illegitimacy in 18th century France. More and more machine-readable numerical data sets are becoming available on the web.