Understanding Data in the Media

Data experts Ted Dunning and Ellen Friedman discuss how data is used in today's digital society. They examine the enormous potential offered by big data, explain the new technologies that enable real time analytics and explore best practices for transforming how we plan large-scale computing projects.

Dr Mark Taylor - Lecturer in Quantitative Methods at the Sheffield Methods Institute explains how to understand the use of small numbers in this excerpt from our new free, open online course 'Making Sense of Data in the Media.'

Dr Mark Taylor - Lecturer in Quantitative Methods at the Sheffield Methods Institute explains how to break down bigger numbers in this excerpt from our new free, open online course 'Making Sense of Data in the Media.'

Data experts Ted Dunning and Ellen Friedman discuss how data is used in today's digital society. They examine the enormous potential offered by big data, explain the new technologies that enable real time analytics and explore best practices for transforming how we plan large-scale computing projects.

In this video, we hear from Joe Twyman, the Head of Political and Social Research for Europe, Middle East and Africa at YouGov (an internet-based market research company) about his experience of conducting research through surveys.

Joe explains some of the basic principles of surveying, why web-based surveys are an increasingly important mode of survey data collection and how to read survey results properly.

A sample is a subset of a population. It lies at the heart of survey research. It is sometimes called a ‘miniature of the population’, so the process of drawing a sample should maximise the similarity between the population under study and the sample.

In this video, educator Aneta Piekut looks at how we select the members of the population to achieve this goal.

This is a phrase used in statistics to emphasise that a correlation between two variables does not imply that one causes the other. Just because two trends seem to fluctuate in tandem, that doesn’t prove that they are meaningfully related to one another.

In this video, Todd explains the difference between correlation and causation and advises caution whenever you see an eye-catching headline suggesting that one activity leads to another.

Most reputable organisations will provide some level of information about the data they publish so that we can see how it was collected, who procured it, and for what purpose. Without this basic information, we should be wary of any results drawn from this data. This information is often described in the ‘Methodology’ section of a document (i.e. news article, survey report, academic paper) and it is crucial to whether we should trust the data.

In this video, Todd Hartman explains some of the important questions a reliable methodology section should answer:
- WHO sponsored the study, and who collected the data?
- WHAT is the sample size?
- WHEN was the data collected or observed?
- WHERE is the data from?
- HOW was the data collected?
- WHY was the data collected?

Measurement is how we quantify objects and events so that we can make comparisons among them. Being aware of the measures used in a dataset will help you determine the quality of the evidence.

What happens when a research question isn’t framed properly? You can end up with misleading conclusions.

In this video, educator Andy Bell considers a recent news story and the research question (or questions) that lie behind it.