| Description |
1 online resource (317 pages) : illustrations |
| Contents |
Introduction : the changing fates of the numerical / Christopher Newfield, Anna Alexandrova, Stephen John -- Expert sources of the revolt againt experts. Numbers without experts : the populist politics of quantification / Elizabeth Chatterjee -- The role of the numerical in the decline of expertise / Christopher Newfield -- Can narrative fix numbers? Audit narratives : making higher education manageable in learning assessment discourse / Heather Steffen -- The limits of "The limits of the numerical" : rare diseases and the seductions of qualification / Trenholme Junghans -- Reading numbers : literature, case histories, and quantitative analysis / Laura Mandell -- When bad numbers have good social effects. Why five fruit and veg a day? Communicating, deceiving, and manipulating with numbers / Stephen John -- Are numbers really as bad as they seem? A political-philosophy perspective / Gabriele Badano -- The uses of the numerical for qualitative ends. When well-being becomes a number / Anna Alexandrova and Ramandeep Singh -- Aligning social goals and scientific numbers : an ethical-epistemic analysis of extreme weather attribution / Greg Lusk -- The purposes and provisioning of higher education : can economics and humanities perspectives be reconciled? / Aashish Mehta and Christopher Newfield |
| Summary |
"This timely collection by a diverse group of humanists challenges undue reverence or skepticism toward quantification and shows how it can be a force for good in our social lives despite its many abuses. The book focuses on quantification in climate, higher education, and health: the role of numerical estimates and targets in explaining and planning for climate change; the quantification of outcomes in teaching and research; and numbers representing health, the effectiveness of medical interventions, and well-being more broadly. One might assume that quantification would be a force for good in climate science, a force for bad in higher education, and a mixed bag in healthcare contexts. The authors complicate those narratives, uncovering, for example, epistemic problems with some core numbers in climate science. But their theme is less the problems revealed by case studies than the methodological issues common to them all. Only by stepping outside quantitative frameworks, they argue, can one appreciate what those frameworks do, how they do it, and whether they do it badly or well"-- Provided by publisher |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on August 4, 2022) |
| Subject |
Quantitative research.
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Quantitative research -- Case studies
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Quantitative research -- Social aspects
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Education, Higher -- Research -- Case studies
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Health -- Research -- Case studies
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Climatology -- Research -- Case studies
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SOCIAL SCIENCE / General.
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Climatology -- Research
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Education, Higher -- Research
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Health -- Research
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Quantitative research
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Research & information: general.
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Society & culture: general.
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Philosophy of mathematics.
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General.
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| Genre/Form |
Case studies
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Case studies.
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Études de cas.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| Author |
Newfield, Christopher, editor.
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Alexandrova, Anna, 1977- editor.
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John, Stephen (Stephen David), editor.
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| ISBN |
9780226817163 |
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0226817164 |
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