What is historical data?

Question

I got a question and I've looked everywhere!
Here it is:

What is historical data? How can it be displayed and interpreted?

Answer 1

It is usually refered to as "empirical data." It can be any evidence to help support your findings or position. It is usually statistics, including the "mean," and "standard deviation." It can also be personal accounts from witnesses, documents including written statements or recordings. It can be from the US census, for instance, or from other reputable sources. Or it can be like Anne Frank's diary, or how much snow melted off the polar ice caps over time, or the rings inside trees. All of that is "historical," or "empirical," data.
Historical data is going to be different depending upon what school of thought you're working with, like is it for geology, biology, economics, politics, ? and what are you trying to do with it, find an answer to a question like "what was the weather like 1,000 years ago?" or to support an argument, like "we should have more peace corps."

Answer 2

Historical data is just that--past data, that is to say past information that can be used to make assumptions about the future.

Example: Yesterday's stock market values, your checking account daily balance for the past year, etc.

Historical data is generally displayed using spreadsheets or graphs (usually bar or dot).

Historical data is intrepretated for your particular project anyway you want it. For instance if you wanted to display information on the immigration practices of Germans between 1900 and 1960 you would compile the data (raw facts) and display them on a bar graph with the numver of immigrants on the left and the years along the bottom.

When you see tables and graphs in history books, business books, etc. they are based on historical data.

Historical data does not need to be just figures, it can be personal stories, photographs, records, etc.