Political Science 138
Quantitative Reasoning
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Political Science 138
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Course Home Page.
Gary Klass Grad. Asst.: David Becker
<dfbecke@ilstu.edu>
Approach to this course:
Homework,
and in-class assignments (10%). If there are ten or more of these, they
will count 10% of the grade, otherwise the remain assignments (below) may count
more than indicated. Data Profile Assignment (30%). A major component of the course will be the Data Profile Assignment on a topic of your choice, comprising 30% of the final grade. This assignment involves writing a paper (approximately 2000 words) on a topic of your choosing. This will include at five to ten charts or tables (five if each chart contains a a large amount of data). Exams (40%). There will be two examinations, a mid term and final, each counting 20% of the grade. Your grades are posted on the web. Login with your university ULID and the password. Book for Purchase: Gary Klass, Just Plain Data Analysis: Finding, Presenting, and Interpreting Social Science Data (New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2008) ISBN: 978-0-7425-6053-6 Amazon.com Note: Although this book was written for this course, because there is a potential conflict of interest in a professor assigning his or her own book in a class, any proceeds to the author from the sale of this book (less than $2 per book) in this class will be donated to the ISU\IWU Habitat for Humanity Collegiate Home. Plagiarism, Attendance and Expectations. You are expected to show up for all classes. You are responsible for any material and assignments for classes that you miss. Each absence after the first week of class reduces your overall grade by 1 point, but these can be made up by doing an extra assignment within one week after returning to class. If you miss five classes before the week eight withdrawal date, you will be expected to withdraw from the course. If you miss the key classes involving a group project, you will be expected to do the entire group project yourself. All students in the course are expected to know what
plagiarism is, why it is wrong and how to avoid doing it. All the written work submitted for the course
must reflect each student’s own original efforts, any portion of the written
assignments, including portions that may have been prepared by other members of
the class, that is not a student’s own original effort must clearly acknowledge
the source. All instances of plagiarism will be penalized and reported
to the Student Judicial Office. |
The purpose of this course is to teach students the
principles of research design, data collection, data analysis, and data
presentation employed in empirical social science research. By the end of
this course you will become skilled in the collection, presentation, analysis
and interpretation of numerical data relevant to a great many social
issues. In general, the course stresses research design and research
skills more than statistical calculation. Although much of the course is
devoted to quantitative statistical methods used by political scientists in
their research, these are research skills which you should find valuable in a
variety of academic and non-academic settings. Among the things students
will learn to do in this course are:
More so than other social science statistics
or methodology courses, this course will stress a variety of practical
statistical and computer skills that you will find of use both in your other
coursework and future career. The course does involve a large number of
written and computer assignments, the latter using Microsoft Excel.
printed
on virgin rainforest paper