SOCI 1010 1nd Edition Lecture 2 Outline of Last Lecture I. What is Sociology?II. Sociological PerspectiveIII. Academic DisciplineOutline of Current Lecture I. Sociology as a Sciencea. Scienceb. Empiricalc. FalsifiableII. Why can sociology be seen as threatening?III. Social StatisticsCurrent LectureThe big idea: Sociology is a scientific study which relies on empirical investigation to examine the social wordI. Sociology as a Sciencea. Science: we determine our knowledge from direct, logical, systematic observationb. Empirical: observations made using your senses (sight, touch, hearing, taste & smell)c. Falsifiable: testable/having the ability to potentially be wrong and allowing alternative possibilities to be trueII. Why can sociology be seen as threatening?a. Sometimes in sociology, what you find is not the same as what you believe or what you want to believe. (Inconvenient Facts)These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.i. Ex. Even with the exact same job and educational background, men still make more money than women and white men make more money than an African American man.ii. “Any belief that can’t stand up to objective scrutiny is hardly worth having”III. Social Statisticsa. Sociology uses a lot of quantitative based evidenceb. Problems with statistics:i. A lot of the time, there is a certain agenda behind statistics ii. Statistics are often misinterpreted and form a life of their owniii. Overarching argument: we don’t use our mathematical knowledge to think critically about statisticsc. We should look at statistics with a critical approach, asking the following questions:i. Does this statistic mathematically make sense?ii. How are variables defined?iii. How was this information collected?iv. Who funded this study?v. Where are they getting the information?d. Recent example: Infant mortality ratesi. In the U.S. we consider an infant anyone under 12 months.ii. In the U.S. a baby in the womb is considered an infant if they are at least 20 weeks and have a
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