Understanding Data in the Media
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Understanding Data in the Media
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, gov...
Recent Episodes
15 episodes
Ted Dunning and Ellen Friedman in conversation part 2
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...
Small to Big Numbers: Making Sense of Data in the Media
Dr Mark Taylor - Lecturer in Quantitative Methods at the Sheffield Methods Institute explains how to understand the use of small numbers in this excer...
Big to Small Numbers: Making Sense of Data in the Media
Dr Mark Taylor - Lecturer in Quantitative Methods at the Sheffield Methods Institute explains how to break down bigger numbers in this excerpt from ou...
Ted Dunning and Ellen Friedman in conversation part 1
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...
Interview with Joe Twyman from YouGov
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...
Drawing a Sample
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...
Correlation Does Not Imply Causation
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...
Reviewing the Methodology
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...
The Importance of Measurement
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...
When Research Questions Go Bad
What happens when a research question isn’t framed properly? You can end up with misleading conclusions.
In this video, educator Andy Bel...
Taking a View From the Outside
We’ve started to get a sense of some of the different ways that the media uses data to make you think numbers are big or small, but sometimes, to unde...
Reporting Change and Risk
Another way that the media uses data is to report change and risk - how much has something increased or decreased? If you start a particular behaviour...
What is a Big Number?
It may sound like a silly question, but if we want to make sense of data in the media, then whenever we hear numbers quoted, one of the first things w...
How Much Of What?
Does 0.1% sound like a big number? Stripped of important context, it’s almost impossible to tell.
Context is crucial in understanding whe...
Making Sense of Data in the Media (trailer)
Learn how to make sense of social statistics and economic data with this introductory course on quantitative social science.
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