The datum in context: Measuring frameworks, data series and the journeys of individual datums

Abstract

Studying a social whole such as a city, an economy, or a society, requires the construction of ‘group data sets’ where the group is made up of a number of individual data series, each one in turn made up of a string of individual data points or datums. This group set forms the most important context for considering the travels of any single numerical datum. The purpose of this paper is to explore and explain how it is that different kinds of group data sets, where the data are collected and aligned according to different measuring principles and to represent different subject matters, affect the travels of any datum point in the group. Using examples from social science, the paper examines how the relations of the data points within the whole set determine the possibilities for any single individual datum to travel within and out of its set, and how the integrity and fruitfulness of data or datum journeys will be dependent on those bit-whole relations that characterize the group data set.