Greetings Economists,
On Oct 13, 2008, at 2:54 PM, Perelman, Michael wrote:
George Sigler said that anecdotes do not constitute data. He was
probably right, but today I would like to think differently.
Doyle;
Anecdotes or individual stories of specific events as opposed to
'data' seems to say data is more of for example a true broader
context. Or utilizes math techniques that ordinary language can't
provide meaning from to obtain data meaning. Which to me is a
confusion about language and math.
Language produces classifications for example, one chair is
fundamentally or essentially like another chair conceptually. These
generalizations come from 'training' the human brain over time. An
anecdote rests upon metaphor or neural net schema as Lakoff and other
embedded linguists would say that are not anecdotal in the sense above.
In my view language data is just as generalizable as is 'data' or math
like information. Computer assisted methods point to anecdotes being
shaped by generalizations of combining language like information
structures in the same sorts of ways that math treats data. In math a
great deal of energy is expended to make data visual because that sort
of expression says more than we can understand in reams of number
printouts that contain the same sort of information.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor
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