Learn how to make sense of social statistics and economic data with this introductory course on quantitative social science from the University of Sheffield. Increasingly, we’re bombarded with all sorts of data about how society is changing: opinion poll trends, migration data, economic results, government debt levels and MPs’ expenses claims. The ability to read such information with confidence is an increasingly important skill for both modern citizens and those studying the social sciences. We’ll look at ways of cutting through the confusion to decide what numbers reveal, and when and why they (sometimes deliberately) mislead.
Data experts Ted Dunning and Ellen Friedman discuss how data is used in today's digital society. They examine the enormous potential offered by big da...
Dr Mark Taylor - Lecturer in Quantitative Methods at the Sheffield Methods Institute explains how to understand the use of small numbers in this excer...
Dr Mark Taylor - Lecturer in Quantitative Methods at the Sheffield Methods Institute explains how to break down bigger numbers in this excerpt from ou...
Data experts Ted Dunning and Ellen Friedman discuss how data is used in today's digital society. They examine the enormous potential offered by big da...
In this video, we hear from Joe Twyman, the Head of Political and Social Research for Europe, Middle East and Africa at YouGov (an internet-based mark...
A sample is a subset of a population. It lies at the heart of survey research. It is sometimes called a ‘miniature of the population’, so the process ...
This is a phrase used in statistics to emphasise that a correlation between two variables does not imply that one causes the other. Just because two t...
Most reputable organisations will provide some level of information about the data they publish so that we can see how it was collected, who procured ...
Measurement is how we quantify objects and events so that we can make comparisons among them. Being aware of the measures used in a dataset will help ...
What happens when a research question isn’t framed properly? You can end up with misleading conclusions.In this video, educator Andy Bell considers a ...