Fary M. Klass, Ph. D., Associate Profesor
Department of Politics and Government
Illinois State University
Saturday, Octovber 24, 9:00am - 11:30am
Seminar Description: This seminar addresses three practical skills: finding the good data, effectively presenting those data, and making sound interpretations. Good data presentation skills are to data-based analysis what good writing is to literature, and some of the same principles apply to both. Poor tabular and graphical presentations often obscure critical facts and lead both readers and writers to draw erroneous conclusions from their data. Data interpretation entails drawing valid conclusions from numerical comparisons and recognizing and avoiding common statistical fallacies in data-based arguments. The seminar will also address how some statistical agencies hide data in plain sight, provide examples of bad graphical design from criminal justice research, and offer tips on using the Excel 2007 charting software.
Cleveland, William S. The Elements of Graphing Data (NJ: Hobart Press, 1994)
Few, Stephen. Show Me the Number (Analytics Press, 2004).
Jones, Gerald E. How to Lie With Charts (iUniverse.com, 2000).
Kosslyn, Stephen M. Elements of Graph Design (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1994).
Miller, Jane E. “Creating Effective Tables”, “Creating Effective Charts,” The Chicago Guide to Writing about Numbers, (University of Chicago Press, 2004). Chapters 6& 7.
Tufte, Edward R. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (Cheshire: Connecticut: Graphics Press, 1983).
___________. Visual Explanations—Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative (Cheshire: Connecticut: Graphics Press, 1997).
Wainer, Howard. Visual Revelations: Graphical Tales of Fate and Deception from Napoleon Bonaparte to Ross Perot. (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997).
___________. Graphic Discovery (Princeton University Press, 2005).
Wallgren, Anders, et. al. Graphing Statistics & Data (Sage Publications, 1996).
Statistical Fallacies:
Campbell, Donald T. and H. L. Ross. "The Connecticut Crackdown on Speeding: Time Series Data in Quasi-Experimental Analysis." Law and Society Review 2: 33-53. (1968)
Campbell, Stephen K. Flaws and Fallacies in Statistical Thinking (Prentice-Hall, 2004)
Gorard, Stephen. “Keeping a Sense of Proportion: The ‘Politician’s Error’ In Analysing School Outcomes,” British Journal of Educational Studies, 47, no. 3, (September 1999): 235–46.
Ross, H.L., Campbell, D.T., Glass, G.V. “Determining the social effects of a legal reform: The British "breathalyser" crackdown of 1967”. American Behavioral Scientist, 13(4), 493-509 (March, 1970)
Wainer, Howard. Picturing the Uncertain World (Princeton University Press, 2009)
