Skip to 0 minutes and 9 seconds Think of a number.
Skip to 0 minutes and 13 seconds Think of a bigger number. This number doesn’t mean much right now. But if we put it in a newspaper, or on a report, or on the television, or on a chart, it becomes a very important number. This number could tell us if something is too high, too low, too costly or too time consuming. It can tell us if we’re doing too much or not enough, if we’re a success or a failure, if we’re headed for trouble or if the forecast is bright. This number can be a statistic, or a decimal point. It can be a spiraling cost or a massive saving.
Skip to 0 minutes and 46 seconds It can tell us who to vote for, how much we should be paid, or what direction our lives are going in.
Skip to 0 minutes and 55 seconds Increasingly, we are bombarded with all sorts of data
Skip to 0 minutes and 58 seconds about how society is changing: opinion poll trends, migration data, economic results, government debt levels and MPs’ expenses claims. Often the data is presented to boost a sometimes contentious claim. So the ability to read this information with confidence is an increasingly important skill. In this free course from The University of Sheffield, three academics from The Sheffield Methods Institute will ask two simple questions - where do these numbers come from and can they be trusted? We’ll look at surveys, polls and other means of data collection, and we’ll look at the legitimacy of statistics. When is it okay to believe what you read and when is it not?
Skip to 1 minute and 41 seconds We’ll examine how numbers can be deliberately or accidentally misleading, how they can be sculpted to tell one story or interpreted to hide another. And ultimately, how can you tell who’s right? By the end of the course, you will have improved your data literacy skills, developed an understanding of how social statistics are created and used, and become a more critical consumer and user of social and economic data. This course would be ideal for anybody looking to study in the social sciences, anyone who feels bamboozled by the presentation of numbers around them, or anyone who is simply struggling to make sense of data in the media.
