The Class: Quantitative Analysis of Historical Data

• 1. Quantitative methods and statistics

• 2. Historical methods

• 3. Social, Political, Economic, Urban… and Milwaukee History as examples

• 4. Syllabus for the Class: https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/margo/www/595/595syl2010.htm

Uses of Quantitative History

• We can study trends – in population, in economic change, social attitudes, political activities…..

• We can draw graphs and create visual displays of information….

Approaches

• Timeline: visualizing history graphically by listing events according to time, or by graphing events with time on the X axis

• Cross Section: Examining “mass” phenomena: voting, public opinion, social characteristics, etc.

Timeline

• 1456: Gutenberg Bible (Invention of movable type)

• 1492 Columbus’ “Discovery” of the New World• ca 1500 Renaissance• 1517 Protestant Reformation• 1607: Founding of Virginia (Jamestown Colony)• 1620-30: Founding of Plymouth Colony and

Massachusetts Bay

Timeline: Growth of Human Population

Timeline• 1456: Gutenberg Bible

(Invention of movable type)• 1492 Columbus’

“Discovery” of the New World

• ca 1500 Renaissance• 1517 Protestant

Reformation• 1607: Founding of Virginia

(Jamestown Colony)• 1620-30: Founding of

Plymouth Colony and Massachusetts Bay

Growth of the U.S Population compared to the UK and France

Growth in the Size of the U.S. House of Representatives

Admitting States to the Union

Poverty Trends in the U.S.

Cross Sections

• Useful for summarizing lots of information about many cases

• Examples from social history

Uses of Quantitative History

• We can study of the history of ordinary people who don’t leave archival records, aren’t famous or powerful

• Thus history using averages and patterning rather than study of individual events.

• We will ask how people lived: • 1. What kinds of jobs did they have?• 2. What were their houses and

neighborhoods like?• 3. What was the ethnic composition of the

city?

History of Housing in Milwaukee

• The City Building Process by Roger Simon

• Looks at 3 neighborhoods in Milwaukee from roughly 1880 to 1930

• The South Side; The North West Side; the East Side

• What are data?