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    Syl 201 F 07

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    Syl 201 F 07

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    Dhon Calda
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    Syl 201 F 07

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    Introduction to Political Analysis

    Professor Paul Wahlbeck Political Science 201


    Classroom: Hall of Government 101 Fall Semester, 2007
    Office: Monroe 477 Phone: 202-994-4872
    E-mail: [email protected] Course website: gwu.blackboard.com
    Office Hours: Thursday 10:00-11:30 Class Times: Tuesday 5:10-7:00

    Goals and Objectives. This course, the first in a two-course sequence, will introduce
    you to basic research design and statistical methods. Political science is increasingly marked
    by rigorous statistical testing of hypotheses, as noted by a cursory review of the major journals.
    This course provides an introduction concepts and tools that will make you a better consumer
    and a competent producer. To this end, this semester we will begin by covering the necessary
    background information on probability, random variables, and so on. In the second half of this
    course, we will discuss statistical tools like correlation, t-tests, chi-square tests, and regression
    analysis, and you will have the opportunity to use them in a semester-ending project.

    Required Texts:

    Alan Agresti and Barbara Finlay. 1997. Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences.
    Third Edition. Upper Saddle, NJ: Prentice Hall. [AF on course calendar]

    Larry Gonick, and Woollcott Smith. 1993. The Cartoon Guide to Statistics. New
    York: HarperPerennial. [GS on course calendar]

    Recommended Text:

    Lawrence C. Hamilton. 2006. Statistics with Stata. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.


    [This book will be especially useful for those of you planning to take PSC 202 in
    the Spring]

    I have asked Gelman Library to place these books on reserve.

    Course Requirements and Grading. There will be two exams in this class: a midterm and a
    final exam. There will also be periodic and regular assignments. At times, these assignments
    will be drawn from the exercises in the book, while other assignments will be based on data I
    will provide you and they will require that you use a statistical package for analysis. The
    rationale for regular assignments is to enable you to get hands-on experience – some people may
    be able to grasp the material by reading the book and from the class discussion, others may better
    understand the material by “doing.” You are permitted to work on the problem sets with your
    classmates, but each student must independently write up his or her assignments.

    The final grade will be calculated on the basis of the following allocations:

    Midterm Exam 30%


    Exercises 30%
    Final Exam 40%
    The midterm examination is scheduled for October 23. The exam will cover all
    previously untested materials, i.e., the final exam will not be cumulative. The final exam will
    be held on the last day of class, December 4.

    I will announce the exercises in class and they will be due the following week in class.
    Late assignments may result in a point deduction.

    Course Schedule. The following is a course outline with accompanying readings. Of


    course, I reserve the right to change specifics in the syllabus as the course progresses.

    Week Topic Readings


    Introduction to the course
    September 4
    Introduction to empirical and AF 1, GS 1
    September 11 quantitative political analysis.
    Introduction to Stata.
    Measurement and data types. AF 2, 3.1; GS pp. 7-13, 89-97;
    September 18 Introduction to sampling. Wainer 1984
    Data summaries and
    graphing.
    Descriptive statistics AF 3.2-3.6, GS pp. 14-26
    September 25
    Probability and random GS 3-4
    October 2 variables
    Probability distributions: AF 4, & pp. 188-191; GS 5
    October 9 Normal and binomial
    Sampling distributions and AF 5, GS 6-7
    October 16 confidence intervals
    Midterm Exam
    October 23
    Hypothesis tests AF 6-7, GS 8-9
    October 30
    Correlation and bivariate AF 9, GS 11
    November 6 regression
    Analysis of nominal and AF 8
    November 13
    ordered categorical data
    Introduction to multivariate AF 10
    November 20 analysis
    Course Review
    November 27
    Final Exam
    December 4

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