Análisis y comunicación de datos cuantitativos

Conocido es el diferente enfoque de las escuelas anglosajona y francesa en lo que se refiere al análisis de datos. Lo pone de manifiesto Andy Sutter -citando un texto de Desrosières- en el blog de Andrew Gelman:

• French social scientists prefer a visual display of statistical data, which is usually presented as “orthogonal projections” of a “cloud of points, constructed in a space having a large number of dimensions”. In them, “constellations of co-occuring properties … appear according to a statistical and probabalistic logic, rather than a deterministic one.” He points out that visual presentations make it easier to understand the data and “to stabilize and memorize” the forms of the relationships. “In the written commentaries [to these graphics], the subjects of verbs are social groups, or classes of individuals, connected to each other by a probable commonality of behavior, [and regarded] from a holistic perspective of the reconstitution of a person, a group or a locality. With a statistical data-set as their point of departure, these analyses try to approach the semantic richness of a literary description.
• Anglo-Saxon social scientists prefer to use regressions, and write their articles in the language of formulas and equations, which include a deterministic part “plus a random error. The distinction between so-called endogenous and exogenous variables, or those to be explained and those that are explanatory, is in contrast to the symmetry of [data analyses such as are preferred in France], which are directed not to explanation but to description. … The language of econometric regression … is adapted to building models for action, relating effects (the objects of research) to causes (possible actions).