Description
Just Plain Data Analysis teaches students statistical literacy skills used to evaluate and construct arguments about public affairs grounded in numerical evidence. These practical skills involve finding, presenting, and interpreting commonly used social indicators, the quantitative measures of the performance of societies' institutions. These are skills and expertise that are not often covered in qualitative or quantitative research methods and statistics texts and courses but that are directly applicable to students' subsequent coursework and in a wide variety of future careers.
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Just Plain Data Analysis teaches students statistical literacy skills that they can use to evaluate and construct arguments about public affairs issues grounded in numerical evidence. The book addresses skills that are often not taught in introductory social science research methods courses and that are often covered sketchily in the research methods textbooks: where to find commonly used measures of political and social conditions; how to assess the reliability and validity of specific indicators; how to present data efficiently in charts and tables; how to avoid common misinterpretations and misrepresentations of data; and how to evaluate causal arguments based on numerical data. With a new chapter on statistical fallacies and updates throughout the text, the new edition teaches students how to find, interpret, and present commonly used social indicators in an even clearer and more practical way.
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