Data Science for the Social Sciences

GOV 50 Subject & Catalog Number

Description

Data is a fundamental part of studying the social, political, and economic world. How can we measure racial discrimination in job hiring? What is the best way to predict election outcomes? What factors drive the onset of civil wars? Is it possible to determine what members of Congress are more or less liberal given their voting record? These are just a few of the numerous questions that social scientists in academia and industry are tackling with quantitative data. In this course, you will learn the fundamentals of data science as applied to the social sciences: visualization, wangling, causal inference, prediction, and inference. All the while you will learn how to communicate your findings to a broad audience and how to use the professional tools of the trade such as R, tidyverse, and GitHub. Each student will complete a final project to showcase their acquired skills. No previous experience with statistics or statistical computing required.