Annotation
Dear students, the complete syllabus for this class is now uploaded. The classes will take place on Monday afternoon: lectures every week from 12.30 to 13.50 and seminars every second (even) week (starting February 20) from 14.00 to 15.20.
The purpose of this course is introduce the students of international security studies (MISS), international relations and security studies to quantitative research methods. Somewhat less formally, students will learn how to create or collect quantitative political data and how to use them to solve practical or theoretical political problems. Quantitative data -- information about political phenomena captured and summarized in numbers -- is available literally on every corner, waiting just to be collected and analyzed. In this class, students get the chance to learn how to do it. Being familiar with quantitative methods enables one to make policy decisions on the basis of a solid analysis of hard(er) empirical evidence, and to conduct systematic inquiry into the nature of international political and security phenomena. Last but not least, knowing quantitative methods enables one not be fooled by others when they try to support their arguments with lousy but seemingly sophisticated (because quantitative) analysis. The class does not assume any prior knowledge of statistics or mathematics, essentially beyond elementary school. It does assume, however, a good deal of motivation on the part of students, as the learning curve may be somewhat steeper for some of the students. The powerful (yet free) statistical package called R will be used in the class, in combination with the interface RStudio. Students are well advised to attend all classes and seminars, and to keep up with the assigned readings as the material covered is highly cumulative.
To get an idea of what we will do in the class (well, sort of), watch this TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html