Interpreting Economic and Social Data

摘要

The book presents a critique of the conventional application of statistics in social sciences as a watered-down version of mathematical statistics. It therefore introduces the concept of "real-life objects" as "statistical counting units" based on the reasoning that socio-economic parameters fundamentally differ from those generated by conventional statistical measurements in natural sciences which form the basis of statistics. Its main theme revolves around the aggregation of the objects in a three-dimensional space of subject matter, time period and geographical coverage. More specifically, it calls for more emphasis on the interpretation of results than on the computing aspect of socio-economic data. The rationale for such an emphasis is that it helps avert the potential risks of assigning more weight to the "significanceon-significance" of the results than to their interpretations based on expert knowledge. More generally, the book calls for a unified approach towards understanding the mathematical and statistical aspects of society.