Glasgow Science Festival
University of Glasgow Q-Step Centre contributes to the Glasgow Science Festival, which is one of the largest science festivals in the UK.
"The principal aim is to showcase the outstanding contribution Glasgow and Glasgow based researchers make to the worlds of science, technology, engineering, art, maths and social science (STEAM)"
Our sessions explore how basic concepts learned in maths and statistics are applied within the social sciences to answer important questions, such as who voted for Brexit and how people would vote if a second referendum were to be held. Using basic principles of maths and stats pupils will have the opportunity to work with real British Elections Survey data using our online application (R Shiny) to look and the characteristics of voters and link these attributes to vote intention. We will discuss why polls appear to sometimes get it wrong, and in what ways pupils should question data they are presented with in the media.
Our sessions demonstrate to pupils how social scientists use probability to test our ideas; using our online app pupils can determine if opinions have changed on the topic of the EU Referendum. We discuss the limits of our tests are and when we as researchers have more or less confidence in our findings.
For more information about Q-Step's contribution to Glasgow Science Festival, please contact; Niccole Pamphilis or Nema Dean