Class Notes for October 24

Model Graphical Representations of Data

• Student post reviews
• Other examples

Reading

• Frederick W. Gibbs and Trevor J. Owens, “The Hermeneutics of Data and Historical Writing,” in Writing History in the Digital Age, 2012.
• What does “hermeneutics” mean?
• New methods of interacting with data demand new transparency from historical presentation
  • Process important (methodology)
  • Why?
  • What is potential cost to narrative history?
• What are data?
  • Evidence for historical argument
  • More than evidence: creation of data, interaction with data, interpretation of data
  • Combining different kinds of datasets enables “new way to triangulate historical knowledge.”  Is this new?
  • “Historians must treat data as text….”
• Visualizing data
  • “Aesthetic provocation”; dynamic process
  • The “value of screwing around”: quantitative data more than just math and statistics: discovering, framing, identifying trends
• Failure

Group Work