Readings
Required and recommended readings, organized by week.
Week 1 — Aug 25: Introductions
Readings:
- Mutz, Diana and Soha Rao. 2018. “The Real Reason Liberals Drink Lattes.” PS: Political Science & Politics 51(4).
- Achen, Christopher. “Advice for Students Taking a First Political Science Graduate Course in Statistical Methods.” The Political Methodologist.
Recommended:
- Wheelan, Charles. 2012. “Why I Hate Calculus, but Love Statistics.” In Naked Statistics.
Week 2 — Sep 1: Causality and Inference
Readings:
- Bailey Ch. 1
Recommended:
- Angrist, Joshua and Jörn-Steffen Pischke. 2009. “Questions about Questions.” In Mostly Harmless Econometrics.
Week 3 — Sep 8: Probability Theory
Readings:
- Diez, David, Christopher Barr, and Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel. “Ch. 3: Probability.” OpenIntro Statistics.
Due: Datacamp — Introduction to R
Week 4 — Sep 15: Random Variables
Readings:
Bailey Ch. 3, pp. 49–64
Due: Problem Set #1
Week 5 — Sep 22: Measurement
Readings:
- Adcock, Robert and David Collier. 2002. “Measurement Validity: A Shared Standard for Qualitative and Quantitative Research.” American Political Science Review 96(3).
(Read 1, skim 1)
Pollock Ch. 1 and 2
Imai, Kosuke. 2017. “Measurement.” In Quantitative Social Science.
Recommended:
- Gerring, John. “Concepts and Measures.” In Social Science Methodology.
Due: Datacamp — Exploratory Data Analysis in R
Week 6 — Sep 29: Hypothesis Testing
Readings:
Bailey Ch. 4
Resnick, Brian. 2019. “Statistical Significance.” Vox.
Hullman, Jessica. 2019. “How to Get Better at Embracing Unknowns.” Scientific American.
Research in Action: Egan, Bisbee, and Tucker. 2026 “Predictors and Prevalance of support for white nationalism in the United States”
Recommended:
- Explore “Seeing Theory”
Due: Problem Set #2
Week 7 — Oct 6: Bivariate Regression
Readings:
- Bailey Ch. 3
- Diez et al. “Ch. on Regression.” OpenIntro Statistics (skim).
Due: Datacamp — Foundations of Inference
Week 8 — Oct 13: Multivariate Regression
Readings:
Bailey Ch. 5
Research in Action: Kerner and Sumner. 2026 “Gender-Role Traditionalism and Opposition to Trade in the United States”
Recommended:
- Sykes, Alan O. 1993. “An Introduction to Regression Analysis.” Coase-Sandor Institute for Law and Economics Working Paper.
Due: Problem Set #3
Week 9 — Oct 20: Binary and Categorical Variables
Readings:
Bailey Ch. 6
Research in Action: Kerner and Sumner. 2026 “Gender-Role Traditionalism and Opposition to Trade in the United States”
Research in action
Due: Datacamp — Intro to Importing Data and Cleaning Data in R
Week 10 — Oct 27: Model Specification
Readings:
- Bailey reskimming Ch. 3–5, Ch. 7
- Online Supplement: Interaction Effects
Recommended:
- Xu, Yiqing. 2021. “A Basic Checklist for Observational Studies in Political Science.” [Working paper]
Due: Problem Set #4
Week 11 — Nov 3: Causal Inference and Experiments
Readings:
- Bailey Ch. 10
- Imbens, Guido and Donald Rubin. 2015. “Causality: The Basic Framework.” In Causal Inference for Statistics, Social, and Biomedical Sciences.
- Healy, Kieran. 2019. Ch. 1. Data Visualization: A Practical Introduction.
- Hernán, M., J. Hsu, and B. Healy. 2019. “A Second Chance to Get Causal Inference Right.” CHANCE 32(1): 42–49.
Recommended:
- List, John A., Sally Sadoff, and Mathis Wagner. 2010. “So You Want to Run an Experiment, Now What?” Experimental Economics.
- Tufte, Edward. 2001. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.
- Rubin, Donald. 1974. “Estimating Causal Effects of Treatments in Randomized and Nonrandomized Studies.” Journal of Educational Psychology 66(5).
Due: Datacamp — Introduction to Data Visualization with ggplot2 and Reshaping Data in tidyr
Week 12 — Nov 10: Review and Midterm
Week 13 — Nov 17: Mixed Methods
Readings:
- Bailey Ch. 12, Ch. 16
- Lieberman, Evan S. 2005. “Nested Analysis as a Mixed-Method Strategy for Comparative Research.” American Political Science Review 99(3).
- Weller, Nicholas and Jeb Barnes. 2014. Chs. 1–3. Finding Pathways.
Recommended:
- Seawright, Jason. 2016. Multi-Method Social Science: Transcending the Qualitative-Quantitative Divide.
- Bowers, Jake and Maarten Voors. 2016. “How to Improve Your Relationship with Your Future Self.” Revista de Ciencia Política 34(3).
Due: Problem Set #5
Week 14 — Nov 24: Hackathon (Thanksgiving Week)
Due: Datacamp — At least one chapter of your choice