When looking at the cotton weight data I think there are multiple things to consider such as the author of the invoice sheet, what company or person the financial statement belongs to, how the price of cotton was determined at the time of the financial statement’s creation, who the customers of the cotton are, who gathered the cotton, the regions in which the cotton is derived from, and much more. There definitely should be in-depth context regarding the story behind the cotton itself as there is much more to it than just the data presented. The process of collecting the data for me and my partner was straightforward as we just analyzed the data from the invoice sheet we were presented with.
If I am reflecting on how to collect the data from the perspective of the people conducting the data accounting at this time it would probably involve physically going to where the cotton is being picked and collected. There I would have weighed the cotton and kept track in some written format such as the statement above. This process would take a long time and require lots of attention to detail as any miscount could mess with the legitimacy of the cotton data. I think it is reasonable to conclude that the invoice statement above could include natural errors due to technology in weighing and general counting is not as advanced as it is today.
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