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Jeremy G. Weber

Statistics for Public Policy: A Practical Guide to Being Mostly Right (or at Least Respectably Wrong)

Statistics for Public Policy: A Practical Guide to Being Mostly Right (or at Least Respectably Wrong)

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Statistics are a crucial tool for making, evaluating, and improving public policy, but they can be confusing. Statistics for Public Policy is a crash course in wielding these tools to bring clarity to policy work, focusing on seven core practices: thinking big-picture about the role of data, critically engaging with data, understanding the strengths and limits of simple statistics, developing reasons for considering a number to be practically small or large, distinguishing correlation from causation, and communicating statistics so that they are seen, understood, and believed.

Format: Hardback
Length: 192 pages
Publication date: 13 February 2024
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press


Statistics are an essential tool for making, evaluating, and improving public policy. Statistics for Public Policy is a crash course in wielding these unruly tools to bring maximum clarity to policy work. Former White House economist Jeremy G. Weber offers an accessible voice of experience for the challenges of this work, focusing on seven core practices:

Thinking big-picture about the role of data in decisions.
Critically engaging with data by focusing on its origins, purpose, and generalizability.
Understanding the strengths and limits of the simple statistics that dominate most policy discussions.
Developing reasons for considering a number to be practically small or large.
Distinguishing correlation from causation and minor causes from major causes.
Communicating statistics so that they are seen, understood, and believed.
Maintaining credibility by being right (or at least respectably wrong) in every setting.
Statistics for Public Policy dispenses with the opacity and technical language that have long made this space impenetrable; instead, Weber offers an essential resource for all students and professionals working at the intersections of data and policy interventions. This book is all signal, no noise.

Weight: 354g
Dimension: 147 x 224 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780226825656

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