Unit name | Arts Students Count |
---|---|
Unit code | AFAC10004 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | C/4 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
Unit director | Professor. Middleton |
Open unit status | Open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | Arts Faculty Office |
Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
'Measurement is a necessary but not sufficient condition for civilisation to exist' (Brignell 2000, p. 7). Numbers envelop us, but too many who consider themselves otherwise well-educated are not comfortable with that embrace. This unit introduces arts and humanities students to essential skills in numeracy first by investigating the ‘numerical turn’ (beginning with the Victorian ‘statistical movement’) in various arts subjects, enabling students to understand why quantification became important for the development of these disciplines. Students will then have an opportunity to work in small groups with a tutor on a project which assembles a dataset and uses basic statistics to answer a research question. Students will be familiarised with important resources such as the the British Historical Statistics Project.
The unit aims:
By the end of the unit students should have acquired the following:
Weekly 2-hour lecture response session; five one-hour project workshops (capped at 5)which will include instruction and practice of Excel skills
1. EXCEL competency test 10%
2. Data-based group project and presentation 40%
3. 1,500-word written follow-up report on the group project and presentation 50%
Brignell, J.E. (2000) Sorry, wrong number!: the abuse of numbers. Stockbridge: Brignell Associates
Crook, T. and O’Hara, G., (ed.) (2011) Statistics and the public sphere: numbers and the people in modern Britain, c.1800-2000. London: Routledge
Freeman, M. (2010) Quantitative skills for historians. Warwick: Higher Education Academy
Hudson, P. (2000) History by numbers: an introduction to quantitative approaches. London: Edward Arnold