A Quantitative Tour of the Social Sciences

Andrew Gelman is a Professor of Statistics and Political Science at Columbia University, New York. He received the Presidents' Award in 2003, which is awarded each year to the best statistician under forty. He has written about 200 research articles on statistical methods, teaching, and applications, and his books include Bayesian Data Analysis, Teaching Statistics: A Bag of Tricks, Applied Regression and Multilevel Models, and, most recently, Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do. He is the founding director of the Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences Program, an interdisciplinary program at Columbia University that bridges history, economics, sociology, political science, psychology, and statistics. Jeronimo Cortina is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Houston, where he was also the Resident Scholar at the Center for Mexican American Studies for 2007–8. He previously collaborated with the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute on its survey designs, implementation, and analysis and is currently collaborating with UNICEF on the implementation of surveys, after completing his MPA and PhD at Columbia University, New York.

'A marvellous sampler of quantitative approaches to social science across a range of disciplines. The authors forsake the dry and mechanical overviews that typify introductory texts in favour of focused forays into specific problems, deemed representative of their discipline's theoretical and empirical output. These engrossing stories of research make the volume a lively and informative read.' John Gerring, author of Social Science Methodology and Case Study Research: Principles and Practices

• 1. Models and methods in the social sciences Andrew Gelman; 2. History Herbert Klein and Charles Stockley; 3. Economics Richard Clarida and Marta Noguer; 4. Sociology Seymour Spilerman and Emanuele Gerratana; 5. Political science Charles Cameron; 6. Psychology E. Tory Higgins, Elke Weber, and Heidi Grant; 7. To treat or not to treat: casual inference in the social science Jeronimo Cortina.