Graphs about Religion

1 week ago | graphsaboutreligion.com | Ryan Burge

I’ve got two sons - one is thirteen and the other is ten. I remember when my wife and I were thinking about having children, we talked all the time about the best type of birthing plan (I distinctly remember becoming intimately aware of something called the ). Then it was breastfeeding versus bottle feeding and cloth diapers versus disposable diapers. It felt like it was consuming most of our conversations for a period of time.

2 weeks ago | graphsaboutreligion.com | Ryan Burge

There’s this huge disconnect between what religious people want and what social science can provide. It’s one of the biggest frustrations of the type of work I do. I get asked hundreds of questions a year that I totally understand the motivation behind - but I know that there’s just no way in the world to accurately answer such a query using anything resembling rigorous social science methods. I think there are two primary reasons for this.

2 weeks ago | graphsaboutreligion.com | Ryan Burge

There’s this very much overused saying in my line of work - data is the new oil. When you hear someone giving a ‘hype’ speech at a data science conference that line usually comes up one way or another. The assumption here is that with the right kind of data, the right kind of analysis, and the right kind of interpretation it’s possible to make decisions that can save lives, lower carbon emissions, avert wars, and make the world a better place.

3 weeks ago | graphsaboutreligion.com | Ryan Burge

This post has been unlocked through a generous grant from the Lilly Endowment for the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA). The graphs you see here use data that is publicly available for download and analysis through link(s) provided in the text below. What exactly happens at a religious service? That’s a really interesting and pertinent question for the kind of work we do as social scientists who study religion.

3 weeks ago | graphsaboutreligion.com | Ryan Burge

There’s this line from Walt Whitman that I think about a lot when I am doing survey work, it’s from Song of Myself, 51:Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedDo I contradict myself? Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedVery well then I contradict myself,Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published(I am large, I contain multitudes.)There’s this inherent tension in doing survey research.