Michael Smithson – författare

The free CD-ROM with tutorial modules complements and enhances the exercises in the text, offers scope for distance learning, and makes both the traditional and non-traditional approaches much more accessible.

Key points of the book are: an emphasis on measurement, data summaries and graphs; a clear explanation of statistical inference using sampling distributions and confidence intervals, making significance tests much easier to understand; and help for students to understand and judge the use of particular tests in the research context beyond simple recipe following.

�This is a major, and deeply thoughtful, contribution to understanding uncertainty and risk. Our world and its unprecedented challenges need such ways of thinking! Much more than a set of contributions from different disciplines, this book leads you to explore your own way of perceiving your own area of work. An outstanding contribution that will stay on my shelves for many years.� Dr Neil T. M. Hamilton, Director, WWF International Arctic Programme

�This collection of essays provides a unique and fascinating overview of perspectives on uncertainty and risk across a wide variety of disciplines. It is a valuable and accessible sourcebook for specialists and laypeople alike.� Professor Renate Schubert, Head of the Institute for Environmental Decisions and Chair of Economics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

�This comprehensive collection of disciplinary perspectives on uncertainty is a definitive guide to contemporary insights into this Achilles� heel of modernity and the endemic hubris of institutional science in its role as public authority. It gives firm foundations to the fundamental historic shift now underway in the world, towards normalizing acceptance of the immanent condition of ignorance and of its practical corollaries: contingency, uncontrol, and respect for difference.� Brian Wynne, Professor of Science Studies, Lancaster University

�Bammer and Smithson have assembled a fascinating, important collection of papers on uncertainty and its management. The integrative nature of Uncertainty and Risk makes it a landmark in the intellectual history of this vital cross-disciplinary concept.� George Cvetkovich, Director, Center for Cross-Cultural Research, Western Washington University

Uncertainty governs our lives. From the unknowns of living with the risks of terrorism to developing policies on genetically modified foods, or disaster planning for catastrophic climate change, how we conceptualize, evaluate and cope with uncertainty drives our actions and deployment of resources, decisions and priorities.

In this thorough and wide-ranging volume, theoretical perspectives are drawn from art history, complexity science, economics, futures, history, law, philosophy, physics, psychology, statistics and theology. On a practical level, uncertainty is examined in emergency management, intelligence, law enforcement, music, policy and politics. Key problems that are a subject of focus are environmental management, communicable diseases and illicit drugs. Opening and closing sections of the book provide major conceptual strands in uncertainty thinking and develop an integrated view of the nature of uncertainty, uncertainty as a motivating or de-motivating force, and strategies for coping and managing under uncertainty.

�This is a major, and deeply thoughtful, contribution to understanding uncertainty and risk. Our world and its unprecedented challenges need such ways of thinking! Much more than a set of contributions from different disciplines, this book leads you to explore your own way of perceiving your own area of work. An outstanding contribution that will stay on my shelves for many years.� Dr Neil T. M. Hamilton, Director, WWF International Arctic Programme

�This collection of essays provides a unique and fascinating overview of perspectives on uncertainty and risk across a wide variety of disciplines. It is a valuable and accessible sourcebook for specialists and laypeople alike.� Professor Renate Schubert, Head of the Institute for Environmental Decisions and Chair of Economics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

�This comprehensive collection of disciplinary perspectives on uncertainty is a definitive guide to contemporary insights into this Achilles� heel of modernity and the endemic hubris of institutional science in its role as public authority. It gives firm foundations to the fundamental historic shift now underway in the world, towards normalizing acceptance of the immanent condition of ignorance and of its practical corollaries: contingency, uncontrol, and respect for difference.� Brian Wynne, Professor of Science Studies, Lancaster University

�Bammer and Smithson have assembled a fascinating, important collection of papers on uncertainty and its management. The integrative nature of Uncertainty and Risk makes it a landmark in the intellectual history of this vital cross-disciplinary concept.� George Cvetkovich, Director, Center for Cross-Cultural Research, Western Washington University

Uncertainty governs our lives. From the unknowns of living with the risks of terrorism to developing policies on genetically modified foods, or disaster planning for catastrophic climate change, how we conceptualize, evaluate and cope with uncertainty drives our actions and deployment of resources, decisions and priorities.

In this thorough and wide-ranging volume, theoretical perspectives are drawn from art history, complexity science, economics, futures, history, law, philosophy, physics, psychology, statistics and theology. On a practical level, uncertainty is examined in emergency management, intelligence, law enforcement, music, policy and politics. Key problems that are a subject of focus are environmental management, communicable diseases and illicit drugs. Opening and closing sections of the book provide major conceptual strands in uncertainty thinking and develop an integrated view of the nature of uncertainty, uncertainty as a motivating or de-motivating force, and strategies for coping and managing under uncertainty.

This book introduces researchers and students to the concepts and generalized linear models for analyzing quantitative random variables that have one or more bounds. Examples of bounded variables include the percentage of a population eligible to vote (bounded from 0 to 100), or reaction time in milliseconds (bounded below by 0). The human sciences deal in many variables that are bounded. Ignoring bounds can result in misestimation and improper statistical inference. Michael Smithson and Yiyun Shou′s book brings together material on the analysis of limited and bounded variables that is scattered across the literature in several disciplines, and presents it in a style that is both more accessible and up-to-date. The authors provide worked examples in each chapter using real datasets from a variety of disciplines. The software used for the examples include R, SAS, and Stata. The data, software code, and detailed explanations of the example models are available on an accompanying website.

This book introduces researchers and students to the concepts and generalized linear models for analyzing quantitative random variables that have one or more bounds. Examples of bounded variables include the percentage of a population eligible to vote (bounded from 0 to 100), or reaction time in milliseconds (bounded below by 0). The human sciences deal in many variables that are bounded. Ignoring bounds can result in misestimation and improper statistical inference. Michael Smithson and Yiyun Shou's book brings together material on the analysis of limited and bounded variables that is scattered across the literature in several disciplines, and presents it in a style that is both more accessible and up-to-date. The authors provide worked examples in each chapter using real datasets from a variety of disciplines. The software used for the examples include R, SAS, and Stata. The data, software code, and detailed explanations of the example models are available on an accompanying website.