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:
“July 4. Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than in all the other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“... social advance depends quite as much upon an increase in moral sensibility as it does upon a sense of duty ...”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)
“These modern ingenious sciences and arts do not affect me as those more venerable arts of hunting and fishing, and even of husbandry in its primitive and simple form; as ancient and honorable trades as the sun and moon and winds pursue, coeval with the faculties of man, and invented when these were invented. We do not know their John Gutenberg, or Richard Arkwright, though the poets would fain make them to have been gradually learned and taught.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)