Following this previous article, a friend got in touch to thank me for disproving some astrological ‘nonsense’. I replied that I had not disproved anything – I had just failed to find supporting evidence – but it did get me wondering about the nature of the conclusions that can be drawn from this sort of analysis.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that people born under Aquarius do show a significantly higher propensity to become composers than those born under Virgo. Consider these three possible explanations… Continue reading →
There is a shocking absence of statistics in books on music history. Generations of music historians have shown little interest in using statistical analysis to quantify their subject.
This website is about how to use statistical techniques to study music history. It is based on my PhD thesis, and on more recent work developing the techniques, investigating various topics in music history, and discovering new datasets and ways of understanding them.