Convo: Joel Best September 30, 2005

Joel Best, professor and chair of the department of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware, will present a convocation titled ?Damned Lies and Statistics? at 10:50 a.m. on Friday, Sept 30, at the Carleton College Skinner Memorial Chapel. The event is free and open to the public.

Best will discuss the statistics that affect the way in which people think about social issues and his claims that these statistics are often misleading, if not simply wrong. He makes these claims in his books ?Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists? (2001) and ?More Damned Lies and Statistics: How Numbers Confuse Public Issues? (2004). He bases his discussion on contemporary issues including abortion, homelessness, the Million Man March, teen suicide, the national census and much more. Using examples from major newspapers and TV programs, Best unravels examples of the use, misuse and abuse of statistics.

Best received his B.A. in sociology and psychology from the University of Minnesota and completed his M.A. in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1971, he earned his Ph.D. in sociology from Berkeley while teaching at California State University, Fresno, where he went on to become professor. He then went to Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, where he taught until moving on to his current position in Delaware in 1999.

Best has held a number of non-teaching positions including director of the national endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminars for College Teachers, editor of Social Problems magazine and president of the Midwest Sociological Society (1999-2000) and the Society for the Study of Social Problems (2001-02). His publications include ?Threatened Children: Rhetoric and Concern about Child-Victims? (1990), ?Random Violence: How We Talk about new Crimes and New Victims? (1999), ?Deviance: Career of a Concept? (2004), more than 90 articles, chapters and book reviews. His newest book, ?Flavors of the Month: Why Serious People Fall for Fads,? will be released in 2006.

For more information and disability accommodations, call Carleton?s college relations office at (507) 646-4308.