Appunti di Sociologia - Filed under 'English'

July 30, 2010

A free book on statistics with R

G Jay Kerns has published a 400+ page introductory text on Probability and Statistics. All of the examples and illustrations are done using R (as Jay puts it, "The people at the party are Probability and Statistics; the handshake is R") so if you want to brush up on your probability and learn R at the same time, this might be a good resource. It would also be great for teaching: Jay wrote the book based on an undergraduate course he gave at Youngstown State University. There's also a plug-in for R Commander to access some of the methods via dialogs.

Jay's book is free, in both senses of the word. You can download the PDF for free from Lulu, or purchase a printed copy for just over $30. Jay has also published all of the LaTeX sources if you want to build the book yourself. And if you're already using R, you can read the book with just three commands:

install.packages("IPSUR")
library(IPSUR)
read(IPSUR)

original post on R-evolution Analytics

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // English opensource R statistics volumi e pubblicazioni

Comments [0]

July 23, 2010

Forbidden to sit! - Vietato sedersi!

EN - In Italy, many municipalities have introduced regulations that prohibit people from sitting and consuming not only alcohol, but also food, in streets. However, people continue to hang around and to meet "in piazza", transforming non-places in social spaces, and re-appropriating (or constructing) public spaces.

***

IT - In Italia, molti comuni hanno introdotto regolamenti che vietano alle persone di sedersi per strada e di consumare non solo alcol, ma anche cibo. Ma la gente continua a passeggiare e ad incontrarsi "in piazza", trasformando non-luoghi in spazi sociali, e riappropriandosi (o costruendo) spazi pubblici.

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // English luoghi note territorio visual

Comments [0]

July 22, 2010

Web 2.0 and visual research

Slides and text of my presentation at International Visual Sociology Association 2010 International Conference, Bologna 20 July 2010.

"The Web 2.0: opportunities and challenges for improving the intersubjectivity of control in visual research"

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // English metodi note visual sociology web20

Comments [2]

July 22, 2010

Where the green ants dream

«The excommunication of territorial “divinities”, the deconsecration of places haunted by the story-spirit, and the extension of neutral thus deprived of legitimacy have marked the disappearance and fragmentation of the narrations that organized frontiers and appropriations»

De Certeau (Spatial Stories, cap. IX in The practice of everyday life)

In this trailer (and of course in the film), it is possible to see, besides the "deconsecration of places haunted by the holy spirit", the fragmentation of different stories referring to different “authorising references”. The social/cultural elaboration of the conflict creates in turn other stories and conflicts: finally, the court is expected to find a negotiated (spatial) story.

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // English luoghi note territorio

Comments [0]

July 1, 2010

Nomadic lifestyles

From my presentation in Koper (July 9th): "Have we Mediterraneans ever been modern? Traditions, places and objects in territorial identities".

(by the way, it has been very difficult to retrieve a photo of a non-white businessman!)

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // English note visual sociology

Comments [0]

November 29, 2009

In Global Terms, How Rich Are You? » Sociological Images

When we consider how well we are doing financially, we must choose a referent. That is, when we ask the question (”How well am I doing?”), we are also, simultaneously choosing a comparison group (e.g., people in our profession, people of our same sex, people our age, etc).

Most of us probably also restrict our considerations to people in the same country. We usually don’t think about how well we are doing compared to all human beings in the world, but this website allows us to do just that. If you put in your yearly income, it will show you where you rank on a global scale (Yen, Canadian dollars, U.S. dollars, Euros, and Pounds only, unfortunately).

I put in the median yearly income for a full time worker in the U.S. and this was the calculation:

This, of course, doesn’t consider the cost of living differences, but it still offers an interesting perspective.

via contexts.org

Da provare e diffondere ...

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // English note

Comments [0]

November 22, 2009

Social Data Analysis according to Wikipedia

Social Data Analysis is a style of analysis in which people work in a social, collaborative context to make sense of data.

via en.wikipedia.org

... and what about the analysis of data related to social phenomena?

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // English note ricerca sociale

Comments [0]

November 8, 2009

Graphic Sociology » Hey Jude the flowchart

Flowchart of Beatles song 'Hey Jude' created by dannygarcia inspired by jeannr

What Works

I love it when I find evidence that someone has taken something not at all visual or even all that hierarchical and turned it into an information graphic. It can be difficult to convince people (and here I mostly mean academic sociologists) that developing information graphics is a critical part of communicating research findings or teaching concepts. Coming across examples like this helps – then again, it’s pretty easy to dismiss this as a silly exercise unrelated to the important work sociologists are doing.

I love the loop on ‘na’ at the end.

Good use of gray scale, too.

What needs work

I am now curious about developing a way to understand how to choose a path. When should Jude ‘make it better’ vs. ‘let her into your heart’?

References

dannygarcia at the blog Danny Garcia.

via contexts.org

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // English smiles

Comments [0]

November 2, 2009

In Italy Lighter sentence for murderer with 'bad genes'

An Italian court has cut the sentence given to a convicted murderer by a year because he has genes linked to violent behaviour — the first time that behavioural genetics has affected a sentence passed by a European court. But researchers contacted by Nature have questioned whether the decision was based on sound science. [...]
"We don't know how the whole genome functions and the [possible] protective effects of other genes," says Giuseppe Novelli, a forensic scientist and geneticist at the University Tor Vergata in Rome. Tests for single genes such as MAOA are "useless and expensive", he adds.
One problem is that the effects of the MAOA gene are known to vary between different ethnic groups, Moffit says. A 2006 study in the United States found that former victims of child abuse with high levels of MAOA were less likely to commit violent crimes — but only if they were white. The effect was not evident in non-white children.

via scientificamerican.com

Genes and ethnicity to "explain" criminal behavior?

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // English IT note

Comments [0]

November 1, 2009

Saviano on "Italia mafia killing video"

I have been invited (by the author of The Global Sociology Blog) to summarize Saviano's words about this shocking video. I tried to keep the terms used by him. The text is not revised.

What is really shocking is the "serenity" of the execution and of the onlookers. The word "serenity" could sounds strange, but when living in the middle of a war, people [can only] look at what happens.

It is the first time that a video showing a camorra execution is made public: this will deeply change a collective imaginary that is so influenced by cinematographic representations of the mafia. The murder - in fact - does not resemble a military action: the killer does not raise his arm nor shout. Nobody notices what's happening. The murder is a fast, quiet and ordinary event, like a car accident in everyday life.

It is the first time that a video is used by investigators in order to engage a whole community to collaborate: who knows the killer will have the opportunity for denouncing without exposing him/herself individually.

Furthermore, the video is important because it demonstrates that there are places in Italy where life is not worth anything.

update 2 novembre 2009: Roberto Saviano's post on Facebook

Loading mentions Retweet

Filed under // English IT

Comments [1]

Links

In evidenza

Tags

English

What Works

What needs work

References