Metastasys

Abstract

The systems analysis of statistical information processing (comprising data pro­duction, data storage, as well as data delivery and consumption) of Section 1.5 leads up to a grand design of a generic statistical information system. This design aims, first of all, at a rather general description format — an encompassing language to talk about empirical data, in fact — in order to explicate formally the linguistic structure of the datasets piled up in fairly huge data stocks which, thus, provide a digitized world image, or mirror, open to analytic scrutiny. However, unless con­densed appropriately to supercodes, or “reduced” statistically [Ehrenberg, 1975], the bulks of data remain rather incomprehensible cognitively. Therefore, data need to be viewed conceptually or, metaphorically, through statistical windows express­ing particular investigative interests or research questions. In pragmatic terms, hence, a statistical information system behaves as a question-answering device re­turning answers, that is: statistical aggregates, to specific questions (data views).