European University Institute Library

A quantitative tour of the social sciences, edited by Andrew Gelman, Jeronimo Cortina

eng

index present

non fiction

A quantitative tour of the social sciences

electronic resource

dictionaries

592756245

edited by Andrew Gelman, Jeronimo Cortina

Cambridge Social Sciences eBooks

Social scientists become experts in their own disciplines but aren't always familiar with what is going on in neighboring fields. To foster a deeper understanding of the interconnection of the social sciences, economists should know where historical data come from, sociologists should know how to think like economists, political scientists would benefit from understanding how models are tested in psychology, historians should learn how political processes are studied, psychologists should understand sociological theories, and so forth. This overview by prominent social scientists gives an accessible, non-technical sense of how quantitative research is done in different areas. Readers will find out about models and ways of thinking in economics, history, sociology, political science, and psychology, which in turn they can bring back to their own work.--, Provided by publisher

Introduction and overview -- What's in a number? Definitions of fairness and political representation -- The allure and limitations of mathematical modeling : game theory and trench warfare -- Historical background of quantitative social science -- Sources of historical data -- Historical perspectives on international exchange rates -- Historical data and demography in Europe and the Americas -- Learning from economic data -- Econometric forecasting and the flow of information -- Two studies of interest rates and monetary policy -- Models and theories in sociology -- Explanations of the racial disturbances of the 1960s -- The time series of lynchings in the American South -- Attainment processes in a large organization -- What is political science? -- The politics of Supreme Court nominations : the critical role of the media environment -- Modeling strategy in congressional hearings -- Formulating and testing theories in psychology -- Some theories in cognitive and social psychology -- Signal detection theory and models for trade-offs in decision making -- The potential-outcomes model of causation -- Some statistical tools for causal inference with observational data -- Migration and solidarity