Hi everyone! We are lecturers in quantitative social science at the Sheffield Methods Institute. Increasingly, the media bombards us with all sorts of data about how society is changing: opinion poll trends; migration data; economic results; government debt levels; and politicians’ expenses claims. We look at where those numbers come from, can they be trusted and how they can be manipulated visually and in written form to support a contentious claim. Todd Hartman: I’m a political psychologist by training, and I’ve got extensive experience conducting surveys and experiments. My current research focuses on political attitudes and intergroup relations. Before I came to Sheffield, I was Director of Survey Research for the Centre for Economic Research and Policy Analysis as well as Assistant Professor of Political Science at Appalachian State University. I’ve been in Sheffield for about a year and a half, and in that time I’ve got heavily into rugby and real ale. Aneta Piekut: I was trained as a sociologist, but have been working in a different subdisciplines of social science, mixing various research methods. In my research I am interested in such topics as social diversity, social inclusion, integration of ethnic minority groups and socio-spatial segregation, working with surveys and secondary data. I spend my spare time in a gym or swimming, and walking Czarek, a rescue dog, whose adventures you can follow on Instagram. Mark Taylor: I’m a sociologist who’s interested in culture, broadly defined - so music, video games, TV, books, and so on. I mainly work with survey data, but also work with data from schools, the labour market, and other more-or-less official sources. For graphics I’m a total evangelist for ggplot2, and I’m in the process of getting my head round Tableau as well. I also spend an inordinate amount of my time playing the Binding of Isaac. We also developed this course to help people brush up their social statistics skills and help combat the rising trend of misleading data visualizations. Here’s proof that it’s us! We’ll be back at 11am ET/4pm GMT to answer your questions. Ask us anything! EDIT: We’re ready to go, and we’ve been joined by our colleague Andrew Bell who’s also a lecturer in quantitative social science! EDIT: We’re signing off for now. Thanks everyone for some great questions and insightful discussion! We’ll keep an eye on the AMA if you think there’s any big questions we’ve missed and try to get round to them! Also if you want to freshen up your social statistics skills then check out our course on data in the media.