817.272.2991

PO Box 19539

University of Texas at Arlington

Arlington, TX 76019

Professor Story's Home Page

POLS 3310 and 5310

Professor Dale Story

Spring 2012

Class:  025 University Hall, 8-9:20am TTr

Office:  449 University Hall

story@uta.edu

Spring 2012 Office Hours (by appointment):  9-11am MWF; 9:30-10am TTr

Hand-outs

• Syllabus

• Student Response Pads

  • Student Enrollment Instructions for CPS (Einstruction) Response Pad

  • Be sure to enroll your response pad asap (and no later than Tues., Jan. 24, 8am)

  • Confirmation of Enrollment of Student Response Pad in a Particular Course.

  • Student Response Pad Quick Reference Guide.

  • Student Response Pad General Information

  • More Colleges Using Student Response Pads

• Review Questions for Test One

• Formulas for Test Two

• Review Questions for Test Two

• Formulas for Test Three

• Review Questions for Test Three

• Statistical Project (due by the beginning of class on the day of the final exam)

• What Did We Discuss in Class Today?

• Seating Chart

Announcements

• No class, Thursday, March 8.

• It is the responsibility of every student to confirm that they are registered for this class.

• All students need to bring a basic calculator (+, -, /, *, and sqrt) to class every day.

• All students are strongly recommended to:

  • Use computers connected to the UTA network when downloading data from the ICPSR.

  • Use SPSS in the University Hall computer lab.

Topics with Relevant Links

• Politics as Science

• Graphs, etc. I
• Graphs, etc. II
• Research Design
  • The Connecticut Crackdown on Speeding: Time-Series Data in Quasi-Experimental Analysis
  • Diabetes Doubles Alzheimer's Risk
  • Italian Prime Minister and Trends in Bond Yields
• Measurement
• Survey Research
  • Normal Curve
    • Distribution under the Normal Curve
    • Normal Distributions
  • Challenges posed by cell phones
  • Other problems of polling
• Data Sets, SPSS (Variable Labels, Value Labels, Missing Values, Recode, Dichotomize, open a .por file in SPSS, save data as .sav file), Download Election Studies, Administer Survey Instrument
• Univariate Statistics
  • DP Index.  Other sources: Scroll Down to Likert Scales.
  • Frequencies
  • Measures of Central Tendency
  • Measures of Dispersion (Variance--previously covered).  Other sources:  Example.  Population versus Sample Variance
  • Types of Distribution:  Skewness (negative=cluster to the right and more extremely low scores) and Kurtosis (negative=flatter).  Other sources:  Example.
  • Z Scores.  Other sources: Example.
• Data Sets, SPSS (Variable Labels, Value Labels, Missing Values, Recode, Dichotomize, open a .por file in SPSS, save data as .sav file), Download Election Studies, Administer Survey Instrument

• Bivariate Statistics:

  • Crosstabs (column percentages)--SPSS for Crosstabs

  • Hypothesis Testing (Chi Square)--SPSS for Chi Square

    • Calculating Chi Square

      • http://math.hws.edu/javamath/ryan/ChiSquare.html

      • http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/qmss/chi_intro.html

      • The significance level is a function of: (1) the Chi Square statistic and (2) the degrees of freedom (which in turn are a function of the number of cells or in some instances the number of cases or groups).  The correspondence of the Chi Square statistic, the degrees of freedom, and the significance level can be found in tables for the Distribution of the Chi Square statistic (in N-N, it is Appendix H, pp. 513-514).

      • "We then compare the value calculated [Chi Square] ...  to a standard set of tables."

      • f_e = [(row total)(column total)]/n

  • Lambda, Gamma--SPSS for Lambda, Gamma--http://www.csulb.edu/~msaintg/ppa696/696bivar.htm (see different topics, especially Nominal Measures of Association and Ordinal Measures of Association)

  • Honors and Graduate students should have already located and downloaded their data set.  Their additional project should be completely independent--and should equal the regular statistical project in "breadth and depth."

  • Correlation Coefficient, Regression--SPSS for Correlation Coefficient, Regression

    • Regression for Education and Income

• Multi-variate Statistics

Additional Required Readings, Videos, Etc.

• View at home:  Bruce Bueno de Mesquita on predicting the future of Iran.

SPSS Help

Data Sets

Misc.

• Ted.com and other links

• 10 variables that may influence Sunday's race for the Cup title (NASCAR and Statistics).

• Does pitches per plate appearance affect slugging percentages (Basball and Statistics--Sabermetrics).  See the movie Money Ball.

• The legal field and statistics.

• Math Sucks

• Millionaire Math Question

• 

• Federal Reserve Chairs, by Unemployment and Inflation--Anything Wrong?

• Phillips Curve

• A U.S. Senator reacting to an EPA study on "fracking" in Parker County:  this study was "not based on sound science but rather on political science."  FWST 12/19/2011.

• U.S. students below OECD average in test scores

  • Rankings

  • Bloomberg Article

  • William Bennett--"A Disaster in the Making"

Recommended/Required:

• Math 1302 and 1308.  This course [3310] involved a high level of familiarity with statistics.  I had never taken a statistics course prior to this class.  Thus it hurt me tremendously.  However, after studying statistics and understanding the concepts, I made a B.

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© 2004 The University of Texas at Arlington

Department of Political Science

PO Box 19539

Arlington, Texas 76019

Phone 817.272.2991

Fax 817.272.2525