Nouvelles cuisines de l’histoire quantitative

From Historical Documents To Social Network Visualization: Potential Pitfalls and Network Modeling

“…This is the case of Historical Demography, which works on nominative data to produce quantitative results on fertility and mortality [22]. Unfortunately, these approaches have been criticized for their simplifications and for consuming considerable time while often providing simple results [26]. Approaches using digital methods and tools are nonetheless more and more popular, sometimes referred to under the umbrella term Digital Humanities.…”

“…Later on, in the 1960s, quantitative methods started to be used in history, providing statistical and later computer-supported tools to aid historians in grounding their analysis in mathematical models and methods. Unfortunately, the lack of methodology and understanding between the two worlds led to many criticisms by historians pointing to using wrong metrics, simplifying categories, and disconnections between the original documents and analysis [26,30]. HSNA, which can be seen as a sub-component of quantitative history, has been criticized for similar reasons [29].…”

“…Karila-Cohen and al. provide advice on how to use quantitative methods in history [26] while Dufournaud describes her workflow when studying the socio-economic status of women in France in the 16th and 17th centuries, which she splits into three steps: data collection, data processing, and data analysis [14]. From our own projects of HSNA we conducted during the last years in collaborations with historians, we propose an HSNA workflow divided into 5 steps: textual sources acquisition, digitization, annotation, network creation, and finally, visualization and analysis (see Fig.…”