Defoe

He was only five years old when the plague broke out so could not remember it. To describe it in his novel, nearly fifty years later, Daniel Defoe needed to dust off faded diaries, survey old medical pamphlets and query archival statistics. Well done research paid off. For decades the readers of "A Journal of the Plague Year" were thinking they are reading genuine memoirs of the 1665`s Great Plague eyewitness. However, concerning statistics included in the "Journal", they cannot be said deluded. These were real and for their substantial use, we can call the "Journal" a data-based fiction. And data-based fiction is nev er closed for augmentation: data can speak more than the author transmitted. I want to give them a voice once again in this letter. A letter to "Journal`s" narrator, from a data scientist writing in the second plague year. [Read More]