Dr. Pearson taught applied statistics at the University of Pennsylvania, authored a textbook on the topic (Statistical Persuasion), and has written numerous articles on the use and misuses of federal statistics. He worked at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, where he earned a PhD in political science. He has taught at Catholic University, Columbia University, Barnard College, and Celebration’s Lifelong Learning program, where his courses have been acknowledged repeatedly by thunderous applause.
Faculty
Robert Pearson
Dr. Pearson taught applied statistics at the University of Pennsylvania, authored a textbook on the topic (Statistical Persuasion), and has written numerous articles on the use and misuses of federal statistics. He worked at the National Opinion Research Center at…
See Robert Pearson’s full profileCourse description
This course seeks to help students become more informed consumers of the statistics that bombard us daily, from claims about drugs’ effectiveness to predictions about election outcomes. When should we trust (or be skeptical) of claims about public opinion or voter intentions? How can we know what a population is like when observing only a few members of it? How are measures of unemployment, inflation and similar public statistics actually measured? And what are some hidden characteristics of such simple statistics as mean, median, and percentage change? If fake news wasn’t bad enough, this course examines the cases in which even the truth can be misleading.