In the late 1950s and early 1960s, historians in various parts of the Soviet Union began to explore the use of mathematical methods and computer technology in historical studies. This development occurred not only in Moscow, Leningrad, Novosibirsk, and Kiev, but also in Tallinn. A small group of historians at the Institute of History of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, in close collaboration with their colleagues in Moscow, made an effort to apply mathematical methods to the study of history. Thanks to the comradely support of the research centers of the Soviet Union, it was possible for the historians of this small republic to progress rapidly. As a result, their work has become known not only in the Soviet Union but abroad as well.

Characteristically, a problem of contemporary social science is obtaining from the members of a sample of n subjects information concerning k variables that are of interest to the investigator. The usual methods of solving this problem are the use of questionnaires, interviews, and/or observation schedules. An immense amount of literature is available on these data collection instruments, which need not be reviewed here. But the instruments rarely succeed entirely in solving the problem; all are subject to the further difficulty that for some fraction of the sample and some variables the required information proves to be unobtainable.

This work does not attempt to review the historiography produced by Latin American historians who, with different degrees of success, have applied quantitative methods to the study of the past. It is rather a reflection on, as well as an assessment of, the different schools of thought and the competing theories and methods of quantification as they are usually debated by Latin American historians.