Have you ever wondered how we know what we know? How do political scientists make predictions about what goes on in politics? How do polling numbers get turned into predictions about who will win an election? How can we predict how stable a democracy is? How do we predict when and where a civil war might break out? And how certain can we be about these predictions in an era replete with “fake news”?

In this course, we will learn how political scientists objective study the political world and how they use statistics to make predictions about political outcomes. This course will expand on the basic elements of research design, introduce you to statistical programming, and give you a basic understanding of how political scientists use probability and statistics.

Most Recently Taught: Fall 2017

Syllabus