Making Sense of Data in the Media

Andrew Bell is a Lecturer at the Sheffield Methods Institute, University of Sheffield. His research spans a wide range of social sciences and beyond, with work on social inequalities, segregation, mental health, education and more. He also investigates the performance of different quantitative methods for use in the social sciences, with a focus on multilevel models. His twitter is @andrewjdbell.Todd Hartman is Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Social Sciences at the Sheffield Methods Institute. His research focuses on political psychology, especially political attitudes and inter-group relations. He has extensive experience conducting surveys and experiments. His twitter is @tkhartmanAneta Piekut is a Lecturer at the Sheffield Methods Institute, the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationship between ethnic diversity and social cohesion, attitudes towards immigration and ethnic minorities, as well as integration and socio-spatial segregation. She teaches undergraduate students how to design a survey, do a mixed-methods research and how to replicate a scientific paper. Her twitter is @anetapiekut Alasdair Rae is the founder of Automatic Knowledge Ltd, a UK-based data and insights company, focusing on spatial data analysis and the built environment. Prior to that, he was a Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Sheffield. He is a Fellow of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, a recipient of the Royal Town Planning Institute′s Sir Peter Hall award for Wider Engagement, a former Commissioner of the UK2070 Commission, and a winner of the Royal Statistical Society’s ‘Stat of the Year’. His most recent academic work has focused on spatial analysis, deprivation, housing markets and megaregions, and his work frequently appears in the national and international media. He has a PhD from the University of Liverpool, an MA from The Ohio State University and a BA from the University of Strathclyde.  Mark Taylor is Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Methods (Sociology) at the Sheffield Methods Institute, University of Sheffield, and is AHRC Leadership Fellow (Creative Economy) until 2021. His research interests are in the sociology of culture: in consumption, production, and education, and its relationship to inequality. He spends a lot of time visualising data, and wrangling data into a shape where it can be visualised. His twitter is @markrt

• Chapter 1 IntroductionChapter 2 How to make numbers sound big, or small, even when they aren’t: “Is that a lot?”Chapter 3 Recognizing which numbers you should trust: “Where is the data from?”Chapter 4 Making surveys representative: “Who you gonna call?”Chapter 5 Graphics in the media and how to read them: “What does this mean?Chapter 6 Maps in the media: “Where is this happening?"Chapter 7 Mapping patterns and people: why does geography matter?Chapter 8 Understanding uncertainty in estimation: “are you sure?”Chapter 9 Ranking with league tables: “What′s the best?"Chapter 10 When a relationship (doesn’t) mean causality: “How did that happen?"Chapter 11 Surprising quirks in the media: “Is that possible?"Chapter 12 Conclusion

What a timely book. In a world drowning in data we all need to know how to critically evaluate the numbers we confront every day. This book will help you ask those all-important questions and demystify statistics. From ‘is that a lot?’ to ‘is that possible?’ the authors guide you through statistical techniques that are easy to understand and simple to apply. Read it, learn the techniques and use them to become a critical data consumer.