This course will focus on how best to describe social science or criminological phenomena. This course will, however, focus on quantitative data. Although much of the challenge of social science is in conceptualizing and describing the social world, the course will also expose you to the issue of drawing general inferences from the data that you have. I hope that the course will help give you a better understanding of the meaning of 'statistics' as they are presented in published criminological research. In addition, however, the course is designed to give you the skills that are necessary to carry out basic and intermediate quantitative analysis of data. It will be focused on how best to describe social science or criminological phenomena.