Exeter, United Kingdom

Advanced Quantitative Methods in Social Science

Table of contents

Advanced Quantitative Methods in Social Science at University of Exeter

Language: English Studies in English
Subject area: economy and administration
University website: www.exeter.ac.uk

Definitions and quotes

Quantitative
Quantitative information or data is based on quantities obtained using a quantifiable measurement process. In contrast, qualitative information records qualities that are descriptive, subjective or difficult to measure.
Science
Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Social
Living organisms including humans are social when they live collectively in interacting populations, whether they are aware of it, and whether the interaction is voluntary or involuntary.
Social Science
Social science is a major category of academic disciplines, concerned with society and the relationships among individuals within a society. Social science as a whole has many branches, each of which is considered a social science. The social sciences include, but are not limited to: anthropology, archaeology, economics, history, human geography, jurisprudence, linguistics, political science, psychology, public health, and sociology. The term is also sometimes used to refer specifically to the field of sociology, the original "science of society", established in the 19th century. For a more detailed list of sub-disciplines within the social sciences see: Outline of social science.
Science
The men in the laboratory... cannot be said to observe the actual objects of their curiosity at all. ...The sense data on which the propositions of modern science rest are, for the most part, little photographic spots and blurs, or inky curved lines on paper. ... What is directly observable is only a sign of the "physical fact"; it requires interpretation to yield scientific propositions.
Susanne Langer, Philosophy in a New Key (1942)
Science
Today, when so much depends on our informed action, we as voters and taxpayers can no longer afford to confuse science and technology, to confound “pure” science and “applied” science.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau, in Jacques Cousteau and Susan Schiefelbein, The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus: Exploring and Conserving Our Natural World (2007), 181.
Science
Within the short span of a human life and with man's limited powers of memory, any stock of knowledge worthy of the name is unattainable except by the greatest mental economy. Science itself, therefore, may be regarded as a minimal problem, consisting of the completest possible presentment of facts with the least possible expenditure of thought.
Ernst Mach, The Science of Mechanics: A Critical and Historical Account of Its Development (1893) p. 490, Tr. Thomas J. McCormack.
When you think about the Earth’s oceans you probably imagine stretches of deep, dark water, exotic marine life and pristine waves. You probably don’t think of vast islands of plastic waste such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an expanse of rubbish which some say is bigger than the continental United States. It was feared that collections of plastic debris like this were growing in line with our increasing rates of plastic production over the past decades. However, scientists have recently discovered that these floating eyesores are mysteriously receding – and that’s actually not a good thing…
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