When Data Began to Read People — Counting, Sampling, and the Politics of Inference
Begin with a land survey at Winchester and Inka khipu, then move through mortality bills, national tables, censuses, the average person, a cholera map, correlation, punched cards, sampling distributions, and randomized experiments. Across a failed mass poll, India's National Sample Survey, an aggregate reversal, intersectional algorithm audits, and differential privacy, eighteen scenes ask how data can be both a mirror of people and a lens built from categories, samples, and decisions.
Scene 1 of 18
1086
Winchester
Counting Land and Value before Counting People — Domesday Book
William I's officials asked across England about landholders, ploughland, livestock, and value, then assembled the answers into a royal record. Turning local testimony into comparable fields let the crown see taxable and defensive resources from afar. This was not a census enumerating every resident, and almost all named individuals were landholders. What gets counted already reveals the purpose of rule.
Replay on the map from scene 1Scene index