Statistics are an essential tool for making, evaluating, and improving public policy. Statistics for Public Policy is a crash course in wielding these unruly tools to bring maximum clarity to policy work. Former White House economist Jeremy G. Weber offers an accessible voice of experience for the challenges of this work, focusing on seven core practices:
Thinking big-picture about the role of data in decisions
Critically engaging with data by focusing on its origins, purpose, and generalizability
Understanding the strengths and limits of the simple statistics that dominate most policy discussions
Developing reasons for considering a number to be practically small or large
Distinguishing correlation from causation and minor causes from major causes
Communicating statistics so that they are seen, understood, and believed
Maintaining credibility by being right (or at least respectably wrong) in every setting
Statistics for Public Policy dispenses with the opacity and technical language that have long made this space impenetrable; instead, Weber offers an essential resource for all students and professionals working at the intersections of data and policy interventions. This book is all signal, no noise.
