[pron]

I would love to see them. And I have great faith in historians' own abilities to resist that urge -- they are well trained at that; I am not so sure how others would fare.

Becoming a "quantitative historian" used to be a dream of mine (before I abandoned an academic career in either math or history). But then I realized that I enjoyed reading a transcript of a German witch trial no less than a Marc Bloch epic narrative, and found it to no less educational. :)