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Multilingual Demographic Dictionary, second unified edition, English volume

Sorting

Multilingual Demographic Dictionary, second unified edition, English vol.
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Sorting  (SORTING)


The edited data are rarely used directly; they are subjected to grouping (130-7) and tabulation (130-6*), and this normally leads to a presentation in the form of statistical tables (131-4). These may be the outcome of sorting 1, either manual or mechanical, resulting in the reorganization of the elements in a set according to predetermined rules, or more simply of a systematic count of the elements presenting a selected characteristic. The choice of elements or of characteristics may be based on the values of one or several quantitative attributes, or on the modalities 2 of one or several qualitative attributes. Few studies can do without computation, simple or complex, isolated or repetitive, and the computer (225-2) now allows calculation that would have been too lengthy by hand. These capabilities have led to the development of techniques of data analysis 3. Deterministic and stochastic models (cf. 730) often require considerable computations, and so do simulations (730-6).

  • 1. Sorting, n. - sort, v.

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