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310 Elementary Statistics for Political Research
Fall, 2000

Syllabus: Course Outline by Topics

I. QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS IN POLITICAL RESEARCH
Sept.20:

Sept.21:

Sept.22:

Inspirational Message: Why You Should Take Statistics

Statistics and the Logic of Inquiry

Why All Analysis Is Quantitative: Measurement Theory

II. USING COMPUTERS IN QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS

 
Sept.25:

Sept.26:

Sept.27:

Sept.28:

Sept.29:

Oct.2:

Learning How to Log into hardin

Recording Data in Machine-Readable Form

Optional session on computing facilities

Creating an SPSS Data File

A Second SPSS Run

Accessing an Existing File: The 51 States Data

III. DESCRIBING A SINGLE VARIABLE: UNIVARIATE STATISTICS
Oct.3:

Oct.5:

Oct.6:

Frequency Distributions

Measures of Central Tendency

Measures of Dispersion

IV. MEASURING RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN TWO CONTINUOUS VARIABLES
Oct. 9:

Oct.10:

Oct.11:

Oct.12:

Oct.13:

Oct.16:

Oct.17:

The Product-Moment Correlation

Interpreting the Correlation Coefficient

Optional session: review for 1/3 exam

Linear Regression

Linear Regression in Research

1/3 EXAMINATION

Discussion of examination results

V. STATISTICAL INFERENCE: ELEMENTARY PROBABILITY & SAMPLING THEORY

 
Oct.19

Oct.20

Oct.23

Oct.24

Conceptualizing Probability Theory

Probability Distributions

Samples and Populations

Inferring from Samples to Populations

VI. TESTING HYPOTHESES:
TAILS AND ERRORS
Oct.26:

Oct.27:

Oct.30:

Hypothesis Tests of Sample Statistics

One-Tailed and Two-Tailed Tests

 Significance Tests for Correlation Coefficients

VII. TESTING HYPOTHESES: ONE NOMINAL AND ONE INTERVAL VARIABLE
Oct.31:

Nov.2:

Nov.3:

Nov.6:

Nov.7:

Nov: 9

Difference of Means Test: Two Samples

The T-Test in Political Research

One-Way Analysis of Variance

One-Way Analysis of Variance in Research

2/3 EXAMINATION

Discussion of examination results and research papers

VIII. MODELING RELATIONSHIPS AMONG MULTIPLE VARIABLES
Nov.10:

Nov.13:

Nov.16:

Nov.17:

Multiple Regression

More on Multiple Regression

Multiple Regression in Research -- Research progress reports due!

R2 v. Eta2: Multiple Regression v. Analysis of Variance

IX. TESTING AND MEASURING RELATIONS BETWEEN DISCRETE VARIABLES

 
Nov.20:

Nov.21:

Nov.22:

 

Contingency Tables and the X2 Test of Independence

Measures of Association for Nominal and Ordinal Data (Take Your Pick)

Controlling for Confounding Variables in Contingency Tables

RESEARCH PAPERS DUE (1st Chance)

X. REVIEW FOR FINAL EXAMINATION

 
Nov.27:

Nov.28:


Nov.29:


Nov.30:

Dec.4:

Review -- Theory, Measurement, and Univariate Statistics

Review -- Statistical Inference and Hypothesis Testing
RESEARCH PAPERS DUE (2nd chance)

Review -- Bivariate Distributions: Strength, Form, Significance
(note Nov. 29 is Wednesday, not Thursday)

Review -- Multivariate Analysis

Final Examination 3:00 to 5:00 pm