May 8, 2014

Briefly

 

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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »

Comments

  • avatar
    Joseph Delaney

    While the infectious disease death rate is low, that could be argued to be due to the short duration of the books so far. In England, as an example, the cause of death in a three year window that included Towton would be really non-representative. It was remarkable just how many people died of violence in that single battle (28,000 according to Wikipedia).

    I would suspect the same about the civil war, although there we do have information on ID deaths (and they went up along with the violent ones).

    The series also focus on senior folks, you seem to be less susceptible than foot soldiers.

    Or we could accept this as a limitation to the author’s understanding of the causes of mortality in a pre-industrial urbanized society

    11 years ago

    • avatar
      Thomas Lumley

      Or lack of audience acceptance for lots of death that doesn’t advance the plot. There’s a nice discusssion of historicity in the two Borgias TV series

      Rome in 1492 was so corrupt, and so violent, that I think they don’t believe the audience will believe them if they go full-on. Almost all the Cardinals are taking bribes? Lots, possibly the majority of influential clerics in Rome overtly live with mistresses? Every single one of these people has committed homicide, or had goons do it? Wait, they all have goons? Even the monks have goons? It feels exaggerated. Showtime toned it down to a level that matches what the typical modern imagination might expect.

      11 years ago