<span>We’ve started to get a sense of some of the different ways that the media uses data to make you think numbers are big or small, but sometimes, to understand the size of a number, we need to compare it to something else.<br><br>In this video, Mark introduces some useful comparisons for particular kinds of data - such as comparing to other countries and looking back through time.</span>

When Research Questions Go Bad

Learn how to make sense of social statistics and economic data with this introductory course on quantitative social science from the University of Sheffield. Increasingly, we’re bombarded with all sorts of data about how society is changing: opinion poll trends, migration data, economic results, government debt levels and MPs’ expenses claims. The ability to read such information with confidence is an increasingly important skill for both modern citizens and those studying the social sciences. We’ll look at ways of cutting through the confusion to decide what numbers reveal, and when and why they (sometimes deliberately) mislead.