Hi! We’re Todd Hartman, Aneta Piekut and Mark Taylor from the Sheffield
Methods Institute and we look at how the media uses (and misuses) data
and statistics. Ask us anything!
Abstract
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.