ABSTRACT
Evidence-based public management (EBMgt) requires analytic reasoning; however, statistics and analytic technique courses are typically taught as mathematical rather than management skills. In “Be Data Literate-Know What to Know,” Peter Drucker observed that few executives “are information literate . . . they know how to get data. But most still have to learn how to use data.”2 All too readily, quantitative courses become the nemesis of intelligent but math-anxious adults and a career terminator for the truly phobic. Public administrators and professionals-intraining require a different educational approach. The private sector is sensitive to this gap. STATA, a leading producer of statistical analysis software, stressed in a recent announcement that “STATA is used extensively throughout the text, making it possible to introduce computationally complex methods with little or no higher-level mathematics. As a result . . . [the text] focuses on concepts and model assumptions, rather than on the underlying mathematics.”3
