Statistics textbooks are not normally geared to the social sciences or history. Statistics books written for social science are normally geared to sociology, economics, and demography, and devote little attention to historical questions. To make matters worse for students of history who approach quantitative problems, the historical profession as whole is running away from statistics toward literature and cultural studies.
Historical writing seems increasingly alienated from quantitative skills.
A central goal of this course is to bring writing skills and quantitative skills into a more productive relationship in historical studies. We are concerned with issues that call out for the use of various kinds of data at various levels of spatial and temporal scale. Empirically, hunger is a medical issue that must be addressed by using all the social sciences and humanities disciplines. Writing about hunger requires the effective use of quantitative data. We need to measure food needs and deprivation, the efficacy of efforts to solve food problems, and the causal impact of many variables on the severity and incidence of hunger.