Summary
Generating and analysing data requires you to be numerate and statistically savvy. The skills that allow you to do this are highly prized in a range of careers. In collaboration with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the British Academy has published a new guide signalling the value of data-handling skills to current undergraduate students.
Aimed at students in the social sciences and humanities, the guide seeks to challenge many of the myths that surround quantitative skills. Stand Out and Be Counted illustrates the concrete steps that can be taken to become adept at handling numbers and statistics.
The booklet contains personal stories from journalists, entrepreneurs, charity workers, lecturers, PhD candidates and civil servants. Case study contributions include: the CEO of Waterstones, the UK’s National Statistician, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Statistics, Director of the Nuffield Foundation, Director of YouGov and Editor of the Guardian’s DataBlog. Each one describes the steps taken to learn QS, and the careers that being statistically literate have led them to.