A nuts-and-bolts guide to conducting your own professional-quality surveys without paying professional fees. How can you gauge public support for a cause or test the market for a product or service? What are the best methods for validating opinions for use in a paper or dissertation? A well-documented survey is the answer. But what if you don't have thousands of dollars to commission one? No problem. How to Conduct Your Own Survey gives you everything you need to do it yourself! Without any prior training, you can learn expert techniques for conducting accurate, low-cost surveys. In step-by-step, down-to-earth language, Priscilla Salant and Don A. Dillman give you the tools you need to:
* Determine which type of survey is best for you
* Estimate the cost of your survey
* Conduct mail, telephone, and face-to-face surveys
* Draw accurate samples
* Write effective questionnaires
* Compile and report results
* Avoid common survey errors
* Find reliable outside assistance
* And much more

The modern world is awash with data. The R Project is a statistical environment and programming language that can help to make sense of it all. A huge open-source project, R has become enormously popular because of its power and flexibility. With R you can organise, analyse and visualise data. This clear and methodical book will help you learn how to use R from the ground up, giving you a start in the world of data science. Learning about data is important in many academic and business settings, and R offers a potent and adaptable programming toolbox. The book covers a range of topics, including: importing/exporting data, summarising data, visualising data, managing and manipulating data objects, data analysis (regression, ANOVA and association among others) and programming functions. Regardless of your background or specialty, you'll find this book the perfect primer on data analysis, data visualisation and data management, and a springboard for further exploration.

The real world is perceived and broken down as data, models and algorithms in the eyes of physicists and engineers. Data is noisy by nature and classical statistical tools have so far been successful in dealing with relatively smaller levels of randomness. The recent emergence of Big Data and the required computing power to analyse them have rendered classical tools outdated and insufficient. Tools such as random matrix theory and the study of large sample covariance matrices can efficiently process these big data sets and help make sense of modern, deep learning algorithms. Presenting an introductory calculus course for random matrices, the book focusses on modern concepts in matrix theory, generalising the standard concept of probabilistic independence to non-commuting random variables. Concretely worked out examples and applications to financial engineering and portfolio construction make this unique book an essential tool for physicists, engineers, data analysts, and economists.

The volume presents new developments in data analysis and classification, and gives a state of the art impression of these scientific fields at the turn of the Millennium. Areas that receive considerable attention in this book are Cluster Analysis, Data Mining, Multidimensional and Symbolic Data Analysis, Decision and Regression Trees. The volume contains a refereed selection of original research papers, overview papers, and innovative applications presented at the 7th Conference of the International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS-2000), with contributions from eminent scientists all over the world. The reader finds introductory material into various areas and kaleidoscopic views of recent technical and methodological developments in widely different areas within data analysis and classification. The presence of a large number of application papers demonstrates the usefulness of the recently developed techniques.

This book presents and develops the deep data analytics for providing the information needed for successful new product development. Deep Data Analytics for New Product Development has a simple theme: information about what customers need and want must be extracted from data to effectively guide new product decisions regarding concept development, design, pricing, and marketing. The benefits of reading this book are twofold. The first is an understanding of the stages of a new product development process from ideation through launching and tracking, each supported by information about customers. The second benefit is an understanding of the deep data analytics for extracting that information from data. These analytics, drawn from the statistics, econometrics, market research, and machine learning spaces, are developed in detail and illustrated at each stage of the process with simulated data. The stages of new product development and the supporting deep data analytics at each stage are not presented in isolation of each other, but are presented as a synergistic whole. This book is recommended reading for analysts involved in new product development. Readers with an analytical bent or who want to develop analytical expertise would also greatly benefit from reading this book, as well as students in business programs.

Organizational surveys are widely recognized as a powerful tool for measuring and improving employee commitment. If poorly designed and administered, however, they can create disappointment and cynicism. There are many excellent books on sampling methodology and statistical analysis, but little has been written so far for those responsible for designing and implementing surveys in organizations. Now Allan H Church and Janine Waclawski have drawn on their extensive experience in this field to develop a seven-step model covering the entire process, from initiation to final evaluation. They explain in detail how to devise and administer different types of organizational surveys, leading the reader systematically through the various stages involved. Their text is supported throughout by examples, specimen documentation, work sheets and case studies from a variety of organizational settings. They pay particular attention to the political and human sensitivities concerned and show how to surmount the many potential barriers to a successful outcome. Designing and Using Organizational Surveys is a highly practical guide to one of the most effective methods available for organizational diagnosis and change.

Leading tech companies such as Netflix, Amazon and Uber use data science and machine learning at scale in their core business processes, whereas most traditional companies struggle to expand their machine learning projects beyond a small pilot scope. This book enables organizations to truly embrace the benefits of digital transformation by anchoring data and AI products at the core of their business. It provides executives with the essential tools and concepts to establish a data and AI portfolio strategy as well as the organizational setup and agile processes that are required to deliver machine learning products at scale. Key consideration is given to advancing the data architecture and governance, balancing stakeholder needs and breaking organizational silos through new ways of working. Each chapter includes templates, common pitfalls and global case studies covering industries such as insurance, fashion, consumer goods, finance, manufacturing and automotive. Covering a holistic perspective on strategy, technology, product and company culture, Driving Digital Transformation through Data and AI guides the organizational transformation required to get ahead in the age of AI.

As the analysis of big datasets in sports performance becomes a more entrenched part of the sporting landscape, so the value of sport scientists and analysts with formal training in data analytics grows. Sports Analytics: Analysis, Visualisation and Decision Making in Sports Performance provides the most authoritative and comprehensive guide to the use of analytics in sport and its application in sports performance, coaching, talent identification and sports medicine available. Employing an approach-based structure and integrating problem-based learning throughout the text, the book clearly defines the difference between analytics and analysis and goes on to explain and illustrate methods including: Interactive visualisation Simulation and modelling Geospatial data analysis Spatiotemporal analysis Machine learning Genomic data analysis Social network analysis Offering a mixed-methods case study chapter, no other book offers the same level of scientific grounding or practical application in sports data analytics. Sports Analytics is essential reading for all students of sports analytics, and useful supplementary reading for students and professionals in talent identification and development, sports performance analysis, sports medicine and applied computer science.

A clear easy-to-read guide to presenting your message using statistical data Poor presentation of data is everywhere; basic principles are forgotten or ignored. As a result, audiences are presented with confusing tables and charts that do not make immediate sense. This book is intended to be read by all who present data in any form. The author, a chartered statistician who has run many courses on the subject of data presentation, presents numerous examples alongside an explanation of how improvements can be made and basic principles to adopt. He advocates following four key C words in all messages: Clear, Concise, Correct and Consistent. Following the principles in the book will lead to clearer, simpler and easier to understand messages which can then be assimilated faster. Anyone from student to researcher, journalist to policy adviser, charity worker to government statistician, will benefit from reading this book. More importantly, it will also benefit the recipients of the presented data. Ed Swires-Hennessy, a recognised expert in the presentation of statistics, explains and clearly describes a set of principles of clear and objective statistical communication. This book should be required reading for all those who present statistics. Richard Laux, UK Statistics Authority I think this is a fantastic book and hope everyone who presents data or statistics makes time to read it first. David Marder, Chief Media Adviser, Office for National Statistics, UK Ed s book makes his tried-and-tested material widely available to anyone concerned with understanding and presenting data. It is full of interesting insights, is highly practical and packed with sensible suggestions and nice ideas that you immediately want to try out. Dr Shirley Coleman, Principal Statistician, Industrial Statistics Research Unit, School of Mathematics and Statistics, Newcastle University, UK

New media has brought constant evolution to professional journalism practices and news genres. Online news practices challenge the occupational jurisdiction of journalism with a multiplicity of conflicting and competing journalistic ideals. In order to prepare journalism students to meet the demands of online journalism today, journalism schools have developed courses that emphasize journalistic practice on online news platforms and tools, such as Twitter, WordPress.com, Soundslides Plus, etc. Drawing on the theoretical lens of digital literacies, Multimedia News Storytelling as Digital Literacies problematizes the emphasis on transmission of certain professional values and news formats without raising students' critical awareness that there can be diversity of values. Methodologically, the present study proposes a genre-aware, semiotic-aware, critical framework that aims at analyzing digital literacies required and practiced by online journalists. It simultaneously encompasses dimensions of professional culture, professional practices, and abstraction of instantiated meaning making via multimodal semiotic resources. Multimedia News Storytelling as Digital Literacies is ideal for courses in journalism and mass communication, curriculum studies, and digital literacies. The book is a valuable resource for online journalism educators, journalism students, and online journalism practitioners.

'A statistical national treasure' Jeremy Vine, BBC Radio 2 'Required reading for all politicians, journalists, medics and anyone who tries to influence people (or is influenced) by statistics. A tour de force' Popular Science Do busier hospitals have higher survival rates? How many trees are there on the planet? Why do old men have big ears? David Spiegelhalter reveals the answers to these and many other questions - questions that can only be addressed using statistical science. Statistics has played a leading role in our scientific understanding of the world for centuries, yet we are all familiar with the way statistical claims can be sensationalised, particularly in the media. In the age of big data, as data science becomes established as a discipline, a basic grasp of statistical literacy is more important than ever. In The Art of Statistics, David Spiegelhalter guides the reader through the essential principles we need in order to derive knowledge from data. Drawing on real world problems to introduce conceptual issues, he shows us how statistics can help us determine the luckiest passenger on the Titanic, whether serial killer Harold Shipman could have been caught earlier, and if screening for ovarian cancer is beneficial. 'Shines a light on how we can use the ever-growing deluge of data to improve our understanding of the world' Nature

Make any team or business data driven with this practical guide to overcoming common challenges and creating a data culture. Businesses are increasingly focusing on their data and analytics strategy, but a data-driven culture grounded in evidence-based decision making can be difficult to achieve. Be Data Driven outlines a step-by-step roadmap to building a data-driven organization or team, beginning with deciding on outcomes and a strategy before moving onto investing in technology and upskilling where necessary. This practical guide explains what it means to be a data-driven organization and explores which technologies are advancing data and analytics. Crucially, it also examines the most common challenges to becoming data driven, from a foundational skills gap to issues with leadership and strategy and the impact of organizational culture. With case studies of businesses who have successfully used data, Be Data Driven shows managers, leaders and data professionals how to address hurdles, encourage a data culture and become truly data driven.

Since long before computers were even thought of, data has been collected and organized by diverse cultures across the world. Once access to the Internet became a reality for large swathes of the world's population, the amount of data generated each day became huge, and continues to grow exponentially. It includes all our uploaded documents, video, and photos, all our social media traffic, our online shopping, even the GPS data from our cars. 'Big Data' represents a qualitative change, not simply a quantitative one. The term refers both to the new technologies involved, and to the way it can be used by business and government. Dawn E. Holmes uses a variety of case studies to explain how data is stored, analysed, and exploited by a variety of bodies from big companies to organizations concerned with disease control. Big data is transforming the way businesses operate, and the way medical research can be carried out. At the same time, it raises important ethical issues; Holmes discusses cases such as the Snowden affair, data security, and domestic smart devices which can be hijacked by hackers. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Climate predictions - and the computer models behind them - play a key role in shaping public opinion and our response to the climate crisis. Some people interpret these predictions as 'prophecies of doom' and some others dismiss them as mere speculation, but the vast majority are only vaguely aware of the science behind them. This book gives a balanced view of the strengths and limitations of climate modeling. It covers historical developments, current challenges, and future trends in the field. The accessible discussion of climate modeling only requires a basic knowledge of science. Uncertainties in climate predictions and their implications for assessing climate risk are analyzed, as are the computational challenges faced by future models. The book concludes by highlighting the dangers of climate 'doomism', while also making clear the value of predictive models, and the severe and very real risks posed by anthropogenic climate change.

Connecting theory with practice, this systematic and rigorous introduction covers the fundamental principles, algorithms and applications of key mathematical models for high-dimensional data analysis. Comprehensive in its approach, it provides unified coverage of many different low-dimensional models and analytical techniques, including sparse and low-rank models, and both convex and non-convex formulations. Readers will learn how to develop efficient and scalable algorithms for solving real-world problems, supported by numerous examples and exercises throughout, and how to use the computational tools learnt in several application contexts. Applications presented include scientific imaging, communication, face recognition, 3D vision, and deep networks for classification. With code available online, this is an ideal textbook for senior and graduate students in computer science, data science, and electrical engineering, as well as for those taking courses on sparsity, low-dimensional structures, and high-dimensional data. Foreword by Emmanuel Candes.

Polls are conducted every day all around the world for almost everything (especially during elections). But not every poll is a good one. A lot depends on the type of questions asked, how they are asked and whether the sample used is truly representative. And these are not the only aspects of a poll that should be checked. So how does one separate the chaff from the wheat? That's where Understanding Public Opinion Polls comes in. Written by a well-known author with over thirty years of experience, the book is built around a checklist for polls that describes the various aspects of polls to pay attention to if one intends to use its results. By comprehensively answering the questions in the checklist, a good idea of the quality of the poll is obtained. Features: Provides readers with a deeper understanding of practical and theoretical aspects of opinion polls while assuming no background in mathematics or statistics Shows how to determine if a poll is good or bad Provides a historical perspective and includes examples from real polls Gives special attention to online and election polls The book gives an overview of many aspects of polls - questionnaire design, sample selection, estimation, margins of error, nonresponse and weighting. It is essential reading for those who want to gain a better understanding of the ins and outs of polling including those who are confronted with polls in their daily life or work or those who need to learn how to conduct their own polls.

DATA SCIENCE HANDBOOK This desk reference handbook gives a hands-on experience on various algorithms and popular techniques used in real-time in data science to all researchers working in various domains. Data Science is one of the leading research-driven areas in the modern era. It is having a critical role in healthcare, engineering, education, mechatronics, and medical robotics. Building models and working with data is not value-neutral. We choose the problems with which we work, make assumptions in these models, and decide on metrics and algorithms for the problems. The data scientist identifies the problem which can be solved with data and expert tools of modeling and coding. The book starts with introductory concepts in data science like data munging, data preparation, and transforming data. Chapter 2 discusses data visualization, drawing various plots and histograms. Chapter 3 covers mathematics and statistics for data science. Chapter 4 mainly focuses on machine learning algorithms in data science. Chapter 5 comprises of outlier analysis and DBSCAN algorithm. Chapter 6 focuses on clustering. Chapter 7 discusses network analysis. Chapter 8 mainly focuses on regression and naive-bayes classifier. Chapter 9 covers web-based data visualizations with Plotly. Chapter 10 discusses web scraping. The book concludes with a section discussing 19 projects on various subjects in data science. Audience The handbook will be used by graduate students up to research scholars in computer science and electrical engineering as well as industry professionals in a range of industries such as healthcare.

Data Presentation with SPSS Explained provides students with all the information they need to conduct small scale analysis of research projects using SPSS and present their results appropriately in their reports. Quantitative data can be collected in the form of a questionnaire, survey or experimental study. This book focuses on presenting this data clearly, in the form of tables and graphs, along with creating basic summary statistics. Data Presentation with SPSS Explained uses an example survey that is clearly explained step-by-step throughout the book. This allows readers to follow the procedures, and easily apply each step in the process to their own research and findings. No prior knowledge of statistics or SPSS is assumed, and everything in the book is carefully explained in a helpful and user-friendly way using worked examples. This book is the perfect companion for students from a range of disciplines including psychology, business, communication, education, health, humanities, marketing and nursing - many of whom are unaware that this extremely helpful program is available at their institution for their use.

The social sciences are becoming datafied. The questions once considered the domain of sociologists are now answered by data scientists operating on large datasets and breaking with methodological tradition, for better or worse. The traditional social sciences, such as sociology or anthropology, are under the double threat of becoming marginalized or even irrelevant, both from new methods of research which require more computational skills and from increasing competition from the corporate world which gains an additional advantage based on data access. However, unlike data scientists, sociologists and anthropologists have a long history of doing qualitative research. The more quantified datasets we have, the more difficult it is to interpret them without adding layers of qualitative interpretation. Big Data therefore needs Thick Data. This book presents the available arsenal of new methods and tools for studying society both quantitatively and qualitatively, opening ground for the social sciences to take the lead in analysing digital behaviour. It shows that Big Data can and should be supplemented and interpreted through thick data as well as cultural analysis. Thick Big Data is critically important for students and researchers in the social sciences to understand the possibilities of digital analysis, both in the quantitative and qualitative area, and to successfully build mixed-methods approaches.

This textbook is a complete rewrite, and expansion of Hugh Rollinson's highly successful 1993 book Using Geochemical Data: Evaluation, Presentation, Interpretation. Rollinson and Pease's new book covers the explosion in geochemical thinking over the past three decades, as new instruments and techniques have come online. It provides a comprehensive overview of how modern geochemical data are used in the understanding of geological and petrological processes. It covers major element, trace element, and radiogenic and stable isotope geochemistry. It explains the potential of many geochemical techniques, provides examples of their application, and emphasizes how to interpret the resulting data. Additional topics covered include the critical statistical analysis of geochemical data, current geochemical techniques, effective display of geochemical data, and the application of data in problem solving and identifying petrogenetic processes within a geological context. It will be invaluable for all graduate students, researchers, and professionals using geochemical techniques.

The general theme of this book is to encourage the use of relevant methodology in data mining which is or could be applied to the interplay of education, statistics and computer science to solve psychometric issues and challenges in the new generation of assessments. In addition to item response data, other data collected in the process of assessment and learning will be utilized to help solve psychometric challenges and facilitate learning and other educational applications. Process data include those collected or available for collection during the process of assessment and instructional phase such as responding sequence data, log files, the use of help features, the content of web searches, etc. Some book chapters present the general exploration of process data in large -scale assessment. Further, other chapters also address how to integrate psychometrics and learning analytics in assessment and survey, how to use data mining techniques for security and cheating detection, how to use more assessment results to facilitate student's learning and guide teacher's instructional efforts. The book includes both theoretical and methodological presentations that might guide the future in this area, as well as illustrations of efforts to implement big data analytics that might be instructive to those in the field of learning and psychometrics. The context of the effort is diverse, including K-12, higher education, financial planning, and survey utilization. It is hoped that readers can learn from different disciplines, especially those who are specialized in assessment, would be critical to expand the ideas of what we can do with data analytics for informing assessment practices.

In an age where customer opinion and feedback can have an immediate, major effect upon the success of a business or organization, marketers must have the ability to analyze unstructured data in everything from social media and internet reviews to customer surveys and phone logs. Practical Text Analytics is an essential daily reference resource, providing real-world guidance on the effective application of text analytics. The book presents the analysis process so that it is immediately understood by the marketing professionals who must use it, so they can apply proven concepts and methods correctly and with confidence. By decoding industry terminology and demonstrating practical application of data models once reserved for experts, Practical Text Analytics shows marketers how to frame the right questions, identify key themes and find hidden meaning from unstructured data. Readers will learn to develop powerful new marketing strategies to elevate customer experience, solidify brand value and elevate reputation. Online resources include self-test questions, chapter review Q&A and an Instructor's Manual with text sources and instructions.

This textbook integrates mathematical index theory and its application in official price statistics. It tries to bridge theory and practice, due to the apparent divergence between mathematicians with ever more sophisticated and complex models and practitioners with problems that are more and more difficult to understand without broad knowledge and some experience. The text offers an introduction into axiomatic, microeconomic and stochastic reasoning as regards index numbers, with moderately difficult mathematics. It also summarizes many ongoing discussions concerning methodological merits and demerits of specific indices, such as consumer price-, producer price-, unit value- and chain indices, in official price statistics. The book is comprehensive and presents a readable overview of a great number of topics in modern price index theory and their application in inflation measurement, deflation of aggregates in National Accounts, sampling and quality adjustment in price collection and other important though controversial issues.