Predicting Presidential Elections and Other Things

“Well written and clear, with entertaining and sometimes surprising examples, this book of excellent scholarship is designed for those who don’t know any statistics and need to be walked through it. The author is both patient and painstaking, popularizing statistical thinking in a way that makes it available to a wide audience and communicating interesting social science at the same time. He puts things in a striking light that should communicate to an audience that is not otherwise served.”—John Ferejohn, Stanford University
“Predicting Presidential Elections and Other Things is a captivating account of how social scientists attempt to predict future quantitative events using past trends and quantitative relationships.”—American Journal of Economics and Sociology

This book shows clearly and simply, through the use of a rich array of examples, how an astonishing host of diverse events can be explained and predicted by using the tools of the social sciences and statistics—from presidential elections and the rate of inflation to who of your friends is most likely to have an extramarital affair.

Booknews

In addition to presidential elections, extramarital affairs, wine quality, college grades, marathon times, interest rates, and inflation are matters that Fair (economics, Yale U.) says can be explained and analyzed using tools of the social sciences and statistics. He has chosen the wide range of topics to show lay readers how it all works. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Ray C. Fair is Professor of Economics at Yale University. He is the author of many scholarly articles and a number of books, and he is the co-author of a widely used principles of economics text.