17.871 Home Page

Subject Information

Links down this column of the page refer to requirements and assignments for 17.871 in the Spring of 2015. Archives of class material are available from Fall 1999 and Spring 2001, when the class was numbered 17.801, and Spring 2002, Spring 2003, Spring 2006, Spring 2007, Spring 2008, Spring 2009, Spring 2010, Spring 2011, Spring 2012, Spring 2013, and Spring 2014. In Spring 2004 and Spring 2005, the class was on Stellar, which means (alas), it is not generally available to browsers. This class also has an OCW page.


Syllabus and class schedule

Syllabus

Hardnosed empiricist presentation dates

Individual meeting times to discuss individual projects will


Handouts

Stata handout

Athena Stata on your own computer
Emacs command cheat sheet

Resources for learning Stata

Stata starting kit

How to Use the STATA infile and infix commands
How to Use the STATA merge and reshape commands

Topics that might be covered in the quiz will be posted here at a later date.
2007 quiz
2009 quiz
2013 quiz


Assignments

Hardnosed Empiricist

Introduction assignment

Problem Set 1
-Problem set 1 solutions

Group projects

Problem Set 2
-Problem Set 2 solutions
-Problem set 2 feedback

Problem Set 3
-Problem set 3 solutions

Problem Set 4
-Problem set 4 solutions

Problem Set 5
-Problem set 5 solutions

Final Projects

Lectures

The following slides were used in lecture.

Overview of syllabus
Introduction to Stata
Understanding, Finding, and Using Data
Descriptive Statistics
Bivariate Regression
Multiple Regression (first part) and second part
Inference

Data Links

Links down this column of the page refer to various data sites that have proved useful over the years. I invite nominations for new sites and information about inactive sites.


Harvard-MIT Data Center
Social Science Data Resources @ the MIT Libraries
UC Data Archive @ Berkeley
Paul Hensel's International Relations Data Site
The International Political Economy Data Resource


American Religion Data Archive
Bureau of Economic Analysis
Bureau of Justice Statistics
Bureau of Labor Statistics
Bureau of Transportation Statistics
Constituency-Level Elections Archive (CLEA)
Division of Science Resources Studies (NSF)
Energy Information Administration
Environmental Protection Agency
EUGene: Expected Utility Generation and Data Management Program(integrates several of the more popular datasets in IR)
Federal Budget
FEDSTATS (Index to federal agency statistics on line)
Human Rights Data Project
Integrated Public Use Microdata Series at the Minnesota Population Center (census data, at the individual level, from around the world and across history)
National Agricultural Statistics Service
National Center for Education Statistics
National Center for Health Statistics
Office of Management and Budget
Open Data for International Development
Political Terror Scale
Roper Center iPoll Databank
Statistics of Income Division (Internal Revenue Service)
Uppsala Conflict Data Program
U.S. Census Bureau
U.S. Federal Election Commission


Society for Political Methodology
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the world's largest archive of computer-readable social science data.
American National Election Studies (ANES), for information about public opinion studies
World Values Survey, which is an international research project that collects data about the values and beliefs of people around the world.


Research Links

MIT Library
Google Scholar
Social Sciences Citation Index (through the "Web of Knowledge")

Finding Survey Questions and Results