Having attended a few classes of social sciences myself I have become aware of the distinction of people favoring more the use of quantitive analysis and the ones of qualitative analysis. Both of them have their place though, and in many cases the best way to achieve meaningful results is to use both of them. In social sciences it often seems to mean the use of quantative analysis as a topic indicator, that is, it shows the topic worth researching for. However, to find out what has really happened or what are the real reasons behind different phenomenons qualitative analysis is needed, otherwise it might be difficult to get to the very root of the issue. Having said that, opinions vary, and ultimately it depends on what is it that the research is trying to find out.

I tend to be inclined more towards the qualitative research, and see for example the case of the “shocking” report by a young intern at Morgan Stanley more as one where, on the side of MS and its clients, there has been too much watching numbers and too little understanding on what is going on in the real world (all the credit to the report though).  However, the problems qualitative analysis often encounter are also numerous, at times it is a bit messy and there is always the question of generalisation. Furthermore, sometimes even the researcher does not know in the beginning what is it that he is actually researching, eventually the research question (and hopefully the answer) stems out of the research material.

That is why the clarity of quantative analysis can be so telling, useful and plain nice, with the condition that it is presented in a good and clear manner. That is also what Hans Rosling does in his Gapminder-website, and as a proof of that I place an example of one of his videos above (there is more on his website). By putting together few pieces of data he is able to bring up an interesting, and in certain way irrational, linkage between diseases and media coverage. The question on why so seems a rather typical one left to the qualitative side to answer, but then again, I would not be surprised if a little more statistical digging took this research topic a big leap forward as well. In any case, Rosling’s videos are almost addictive, which is something that statistics is not generally known to be.

Tags: Hans Rosling, qualitative, quantitative, Statistics

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