POLSCI 3NN3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Standard Deviation
5 Jan 2017
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Document Summary
Focus on the step after getting the data. Not going to lectures: material is cumulative. Probably easiest class to get an a: clear-cut answers, right and wrong answers. Focus is not the math, it is the politics. Analysis of stats is instrumental to larger goal of understanding the political and social world. Important to understand how statistics is used because it is embedded in life (e. g. news stories) Encountering social stats requires one to ask how was it produced. The research process is filled with choices, assumptions: this becomes embedded in the numbers, numbers themselves are political. Can be manipulated to tell a story with numbers used as props. Statistics may be numeral but it doesn"t make them factual. Going to learn how pollsters are able to get election predictions right more often than wrong: sample of 1000 out of 2m voters. Analysis between the debt to gdp ratio. Mit grad "disagreed and looked at their data: found errors.
