ABSTRACT
Since this book is concerned with the quantitative analysis of historical problems, in which the dimension of time is ever present, it may seem surprising that it is only at this point that the question of ‘time series’ has been raised explicitly. It is important to realize, however, that the historical character of the data does not necessarily mean that they constitute, in the strict sense, a ‘time series’; we give the name of ‘time series’ only to a set of data which is ordered chronologically. Thus neither the data on Domesday parishes nor the data on ships constitute time series. They are series of observations, the first of Domesday parishes and the second of ships, which were made sufficiently close together for us to be able to assign the same date to all the observations in each data matrix; the items are not in any way chronologically ordered.
