Statistics in The Social Sciences
Statistics and statistical analyses have become a key feature of social science. Statistics is employed in economics, psychology, political science, sociology and anthropology. There is a debate regarding the uses and value of statistical methods in social science, especially in political science, with some statisticians questioning the policy conclusions of political partisans who overestimate the interpretive power that non-robust statistical methods such as simple and multiple linear regression allow. Indeed, an important mantra that social scientists cite, but often forget, is that "correlation does not imply causation."
The use of statistics has become so widespread in the social sciences that many universities such as Harvard, have developed institutes focusing on "quantitative social science." Harvard's Institute for Quantitative Social Science focuses mainly on fields like political science that are incorporate the advanced causal statistical models that Bayesian methods provide.
Read more about this topic: Social Statistics
Famous quotes containing the words statistics, social and/or sciences:
“We ask for no statistics of the killed,
For nothing political impinges on
This single casualty, or all those gone,
Missing or healing, sinking or dispersed,
Hundreds of thousands counted, millions lost.”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)
“Today’s city is the most vulnerable social structure ever conceived by man.”
—Martin Oppenheimer (b. 1930)
“Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of learning those sciences which may, by mere labour, be obtained, is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can exert some judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of critic.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)