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:
“O for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Sports are positively essential. It is healthy to engage in sports, they are beautiful and liberal, liberal in the sense that nothing serves quite as well to integrate social classes, etc., than street or public games.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting the progress of the arts and the sciences and a flourishing culture in our land.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)