[Sca-cooks] Period statistics?

[Terry Decker]

>> There's this nifty piece of documentary evidence that is little more than
a
>> massive statistics project for the purposes of maximizing tax revenues.
We
>> laymen call it The Domesday Book.
>
>No, that is data. That is not statistics. Is there any evidence that they
>tried to analyze the data as a whole or as part of the whole? Or did they
>simply use it as a catalog to determine how much money they could get from
>a particular area.

What you (and almost everyone else) calls statistics is more correctly
statistical analysis.  Statistics are numerical data, so the census records
of the Domesday Book are properly statistics.

>
>> The clerks working for any king, or heck-
>> teh clerks working for the Hansa knew everything there was to know about
>> pre-calc statistics.
>
>Again, any indication that they used the information that way?

Difficult to say, but market analysis and double entry bookkeeping were
certainly developed to a fine art by the Renaissance merchant bankers.
Probability analysis, however, is a 17th Century developement begun by
Blaise Pascal.
>
>> And how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? ;-)
>
>That is a theological question and has no basis in reality. :-)
>
>--
>THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra

Only if you approach it as a theologian.  Looking at it from a physicists
point of view, it is a Fermi problem with a particle of indeterminate
physical properties in a small but variable area.

Bear