The Use of Ideal Types in Statistical Analysis

No historical problem can be treated without the aid of ideal types. Historians cannot avoid referring to ideal types when dealing with an individual person or a single event. The layman, too, in dealing with events of the past or of the future, must always make use of ideal types and unwittingly does so. It is not the ideal type which determines the mode of understanding; it is the mode of Understanding that requires the construction and use of corresponding ideal types.