PWR 1MG: Numbers, Metrics, and Counting: The Rhetoric of Quantitative Thinking: Find background and reference sources
This guide is here to introduce PWR1 students in Mark Gardiner's class on useful library resources.
Where should you look?
In most STEM fields, and in most of the quantitative social sciences, the format of articles (or conference papers, especially in computer science) is the most important way to find scholarly information about a research topic. Mathematics and Statistics still use books about as equally as articles, and there are several social science fields that will also use books extensively.
I have highlighted a few books and article databases of possible interest below. There may be other places besides these that are better for you. If you need help, visit the "Getting reference assistance" tab to find support.
Selected article databases
- ScopusScopus is a general database covering a wide range of fields. It is one of the databases I recommend you try; you can probably find most of what you need by searching here or Web of Science.
- Web of science--all databasesWeb of Science is a general database covering a wide range of fields. It is one of the databases I recommend you try; you can probably find most of what you need by searching here or Scopus.
- DeepResearchIf you want to try an alternative platform to search for materials, I would recommend xSearch. This platform searches many of our databases and other collections at one time. The number of results can be overwhelming, but it has good faceting and filtering to narrow down what you see.
- arXiv.orgMuch of the initial information about a research topic in the scholarly community for mathematics and computer science is released in something called preprint form on a site known as arXiv. If you have time, I highly recommend you take a peek here and browse for topics of interest.
Selected books from our collection
- The New International System of Units (SI) by Ernst O. Göbel; Uwe SiegnerISBN: 9783527814480Publication Date: 2019-06-07The International System of Units, the SI, provides the foundation for all measurements in science, engineering, economics, and society. The SI has been fundamentally revised in 2019. The new SI is a universal and highly stable unit system based on invariable constants of nature. Its implementation rests on quantum metrology and quantum standards, which base measurements on the manipulation and counting of single quantum objects, such as electrons, photons, ions, and flux quanta. This book explains and illustrates the new SI, its impact on measurements, and the quantum metrology and quantum technology behind it. The book is based on the book ?Quantum Metrology: Foundation of Units and Measurements? by the same authors. From the contents: -Measurement -The SI (Système International d?Unités) -Realization of the SI Second: Thermal Beam Cs Clock, Laser Cooling, and the Cs Fountain Clock -Flux Quanta, Josephson Effect, and the SI Volt -Quantum Hall Effect, the SI Ohm, and the SI Farad -Single-Charge Transfer Devices and the SI Ampere -The SI Kilogram, the Mole, and the Planck constant -The SI Kelvin and the Boltzmann Constant -Beyond the present SI: Optical Clocks and Quantum Radiometry -Outlook
- Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts by Peter Andreas (Editor); Kelly M. Greenhill (Editor)ISBN: 9780801448614Publication Date: 2010-06-15At least 200,000-250,000 people died in the war in Bosnia. "There are three million child soldiers in Africa." "More than 650,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the U.S. occupation of Iraq." "Between 600,000 and 800,000 women are trafficked across borders every year." "Money laundering represents as much as 10 percent of global GDP." "Internet child porn is a $20 billion-a-year industry." These are big, attention-grabbing numbers, frequently used in policy debates and media reporting. Peter Andreas and Kelly M. Greenhill see only one problem: these numbers are probably false. Their continued use and abuse reflect a much larger and troubling pattern: policymakers and the media naively or deliberately accept highly politicized and questionable statistical claims about activities that are extremely difficult to measure. As a result, we too often become trapped by these mythical numbers, with perverse and counterproductive consequences. This problem exists in myriad policy realms. But it is particularly pronounced in statistics related to the politically charged realms of global crime and conflict-numbers of people killed in massacres and during genocides, the size of refugee flows, the magnitude of the illicit global trade in drugs and human beings, and so on. In Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts, political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and policy analysts critically examine the murky origins of some of these statistics and trace their remarkable proliferation. They also assess the standard metrics used to evaluate policy effectiveness in combating problems such as terrorist financing, sex trafficking, and the drug trade.
- Formal Approaches to Poetry by Bezalel E. Dresher; Nila Friedberg (Editor)ISBN: 9783110197624Publication Date: 2008-08-22This book will create greater public awareness of some recent exciting findings in the formal study of poetry. The last influential volume on the subject, Rhythm and Meter , edited by Paul Kiparsky and Gilbert Youmans, appeared fifteen years ago. Since that time, a number of important theoretical developments have taken place, which have led to new approaches to the analysis of meter. This volume represents some of the most exciting current thinking on the theory of meter. In terms of empirical coverage, the papers focus on a wide variety of languages, including English, Finnish, Estonian, Russian, Japanese, Somali, Old Norse, Latin, and Greek. Thus, the collection is truly international in its scope. The volume also contains diverse theoretical approaches that are brought together for the first time, including Optimality Theory (Kiparsky, Hammond), other constraint-based approaches (Friedberg, Hall, Scherr), the Quantitative approach to verse (Tarlinskaja, Friedberg, Hall, Scherr, Youmans) associated with the Russian school of metrics, a mora-based approach (Cole and Miyashita, Fitzgerald), a semantic-pragmatic approach (Fabb), and an alternative generative approach developed in Estonia (M. Lotman and M. K. Lotman). The book will be of interest to both linguists interested in stress and speech rhythm, constraint systems, phrasing, and phonology-syntax interaction and poetry, as well as to students of poetry interested in the connection between language and literature.
- Metric Culture by Btihaj Ajana (Editor)ISBN: 9781787432895Publication Date: 2018-09-24We live in a "metric culture" where data, algorithms, and numbers play an unmistakably powerful role in defining, shaping and ruling the world we inhabit. Increasingly, governments across the globe are turning towards metric technologies to find solutions for managing various social domains such as healthcare and education. While private corporations are becoming more and more interested in the collection and analysis of data and metrics for profit generation and service optimisation. What is striking about this metric culture is that not only are governments and private companies the only actors interested in using metrics and data to control and manage individuals and populations, but individuals themselves are now choosing to voluntarily quantify themselves and their lives more than ever before, happily sharing the resulting data with others and actively turning themselves into projects of (self-) governance and surveillance. Metric Cultureis also not only about data and numbers alone but links to issues of power and control, to questions of value and agency, and to expressions of self and identity. This book provides a critical investigation into these issues examining what is driving the agenda of metric culture and how it is manifested in the different spheres of everyday life through self-tracking practices. Authors engage with a broad range of topics, examples, geographical contexts, and sites of analysis in order to account for the diversity and hybridity of metric culture and explore its various social, political and ethical implications.
- Last Updated: Dec 16, 2024 8:27 AM
- URL: https://guides.library.stanford.edu/rhetoric_of_quantitative_thinking
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