Session 6 — From world to table
Day 1 · 60 minutes
- Reading: Loukissas, Chapter 2, A Place for Plant Data, pp. 27–54
- Output: Small data-making exercise
Close reading
Chapter 2, A Place for Plant Data (Loukissas 2019, 27–54). Session 5 reads the same chapter from a different angle.
We read this text together in the session.
Reading summary
The Arboretum case shows that digitization does not simply copy the world. Records and visualizations select some relations and hide others. Irregularities can contain history. Different visual forms can also produce different readings of the same records.
In class
Students choose an object, place, or process and turn it into a small hypothetical dataset. They define observations, variables, values, and categories. They then ask what the translation gains and what it loses.
Output
A small hypothetical dataset, with notes on its gains and losses.
After Day 1
Two tasks follow this session. Read the ten required sections of Introduction to Modern Statistics (2e). Bring one dataset to Day 2. See the assignments for the full list.