Real-World Economics Review Blog This Week in Sociology Understanding Society Technosociology About ethnography, research & insight Graphic Sociology Cairo, Alberto. (2013) The Functional Art: An introduction to information graphics and visualization. Berkeley: New Riders, a division of Pearson. Overview A functional art is a book in divided into four parts, but really it is easier to understand as only two parts. The second part of the book is a series of interviews with journalists, designers, and artists about graphics and the work required to make good ones. The second is a set of photographs taken of a clay model by Juan Velasco and Fernando Baptista of National Geographic that was used to recreate an ancient dwelling place call Gobekli Tepe that was in what is now Turkey. As a sociologist I am accustomed to reading interviews and am fascinated by the convergence and divergence in the opinions represented. There is a fifth part to the book, too, a DVD of Cairo presenting the material covered in the first three chapters of the book. What does this book do well? Diversity What doesn’t this book do well? Summary References
Everyday Sociology Blog By Karen Sternheimer As a self-starter, I like self-help books, and have read or listened to number of audio books in the genre. I have listened to many books on discovering one’s passions and creativity, on personal finance, relationships, career building, and those promoting emotional well-being. But even while listening, on occasion I am reminded of the limits of self-help books. Social Science Statistics Blog 28 April 2013 App Stats: Roberts, Stewart, and Tingley on "Topic models for open ended survey responses with applications to experiments" We hope you can join us this Wednesday, May 1, 2013 for the Applied Statistics Workshop. Molly Roberts, Brandon Stewart, and Dustin Tingley, all from the Department of Government at Harvard University, will give a presentation entitled "Topic models for open ended survey responses with applications to experiments". A light lunch will be served at 12 pm and the talk will begin at 12.15. "Topic models for open ended survey responses with applications to experiments" Molly Roberts, Brandon Stewart, and Dustin Tingley Government Department, Harvard University CGIS K354 (1737 Cambridge St.) Abstract: Despite broad use of surveys and survey experiments by political science, the vast majority of survey analysis deals with responses to options along a scale or from pre-established categories. Posted by Konstantin Kashin at 11:25 PM | Comments (2) 22 April 2013