ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the key issues that historians grapple with concerning quantitative analysis of historical data. Although there is a wide range of different techniques for quantitative analysis available to the historian – from the simple descriptive statistics to complex econometric analysis – there are a host of practical and conceptual issues that need to be considered before reading sources quantitatively. The chapter begins with a review of some of the challenges that historians face in dealing with prices and quantities of historical commodities, with a section on historical metrology. Using the example of network analysis, the next section reviews how quantitative techniques can be used to ‘peek under the hood’ of monolithic institutions and organisations to make human agency and relationships more visible. The practicalities of assembling and managing information in databases is discussed in the next section, which can be helpful to scholars using both quantitative as well as qualitative analysis. The chapter concludes with a short overview of statistical analytical methods including regression analysis.
