Course Synopsis:

Why should someone care about understanding statistics and being able to both critique and design research? Moreover, to what end is a statistics course in political science? Isn’t politics just that—maneuvering in the political sphere, the interactions between countries, or how a bill becomes a law?

The truth might surprise you: nearly every government policy decision relies on good research and strong statistical analysis. The cars we drive must live up to emission standards that are set, for the most part, by quantitative analyses of air quality and the amount of carbon dioxide and monoxide produced by our automobile engines. Presidential elections can be won and lost by a candidate’s performance in the polls, a system that relies heavily on sampling theory. And whether or not a new drug is approved by the FDA relies on strong experimental evidence and statistical analysis to determine whether it is safe for public consumption.

The goal of this course is to provide students with an elementary understanding of statistics, to indicate how this knowledge can help us to better understand social phenomena, and to give students the tools needed to design their own research. Further, we hope, by the end of the course, to all have at our fingertips a set of tools that will allow each of us to more critically assess the numbers we see flashing before us everyday.