Introduction to Statistics for Political Data Science

An introduction of basic statistical concepts in application to the social sciences. There is a strong programming component, using the Python language and statsmodels package. The course begins conceptually with research design and the role of theory in statistical analysis, then introduces mathematical formalisms in probability with the Central Limit Theorem before moving to statistical techniques such as hypothesis testing and linear regression. The culmination of this course is a project in the style of an academic research paper which draws upon the techniques from the class to answer a question of the student’s choosing.