1. Data is a historical artifact
2. Statistics is the domain of the state and other bureaucracies

Climate metadata, 1789-c.1860

icoads.noaa.gov

1848 6 1     3723 29038 02 4    10ISABE*_N   1   5                                                           
165 20779701 69 5 0 1                  FFFFFF77AAAAAAAAAAAA     99 0 790044118480601 
3714N 6937W                                                                           NW     51 NW     57 NW   
51                                          201A.STEWART       NEW BEDFORD             WHALING V
OYAGE           2620 199

Logbook Digitization in the 1920s

Wallbrink, H. and F.B. Koek, Data Acquisition And Keypunching Codes For Marine Meteorological Observations At The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, 1854–1968

Digitized logbooks, c. 1930

Wallbrink and Koek

Interactivity

In a recent bulletin of the Superintendent of the Census for 1890 appear these significant words: "Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can hardly be said to be a frontier line. In the discussion of its extent, its westward movement, etc., it can not, therefore, any longer have a place in the census reports." This brief official statement marks the closing of a great historic movement. Up to our own day American history has been in a large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West.

The maps of the census reports show an uneven advance of the farmer's frontier, with tongues of settlement pushed forward and with indentations of wilderness. In part this is due to Indian resistance, in part to the location of river valleys and passes, in part to the unequal force of the centers of frontier attraction.

Turner, Significance

Charles Paullin Historical Atlas, 1932

David Rumsey Historical Maps

1890:

1. The Turner Census
2. The Exclusion Census
3. The Punchcard Census
4. The Lost Census.

Vox Media/Jet Blue

Calculating the center of population

points = counties.data().map(function(d) {
   return [d3.geo.centroid(d),d.properties[value]]
})
var meanLat = d3.sum(points.map(function(a) {
 return a[0][1]*a[1]}))/
 d3.sum(points.map(function(a) {
 return a[1]
}))
var meanLong = d3.sum(points.map(function(a) {
 return a[0][0]*a[1]*
 Math.cos(a[0][1]/180*Math.PI)}))/
 d3.sum(points.map(function(a) {
    return a[1]*Math.cos(a[0][1]/180*Math.PI)
 }))
})

Turner, "Western State Making in the Revolutionary Era:" AHR, Volume 1, Issue 1

1. Filtering
2. Abstraction
3. Representation

Matthew Maury

Confederate Navy Engraving 1862, from http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/maury_mat_bene.htm

Abstract Logbooks

Harvard University Library