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 2012. 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, and Spring 2011. 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

Edward Tufte. Data Analysis for Politics and Policy. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1974 (link to online archive of book)


Handouts

Stata handout

Athena Stata on your own computer
Resources for learning Stata
Introduction to Stata exercises (zip file)

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
2007 quiz
2009 quiz


Assignments

Hard-Nose Empiricist
Presentation dates

Introduction assignment

Problem Set 1
Mike's Problem Set 1 tips
ZIP file with do-files for Problem Set 1
Speed dating data | Speed dating codebook
CCES data

Group project assignment
Group project additional information
General comments on the group projects
Comments: names project

Problem Set 2
Mike's Problem Set 2 tips

Problem Set 3
Mike's Problem Set 3 solutions
Do-file associated with Mike's Problem Set 3 solutions
Spreadsheet to calculate estimated probabilities of OJ Simpson question

Problem Set 4
Mike's Problem Set 4 solutions

Final Projects

Lectures

The following slides were used in lecture.

Research Design (Actually, I skipped this lecture, but you may want to review the slides.)
Do Voting Machines Cause Lost Votes (example)
Introduction to Stata
Descriptive Statistics
Bivariate Regression
Multiple Regression. Version 2 of the slides.
Race and voting in Florida
Inference
Special Topics

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
Political Science Data Resources from the Stanford University Library
UC Data Archive @ Berkeley
Paul Hensel's International Relations Data Site


American Religion Data Archive
Bureau of Economic Analysis
Bureau of Justice Statistics
Bureau of Labor Statistics
Bureau of Transportation Statistics
Division of Science Resources Studies (NSF)
Energy Information Administration
Environmental Protection Agency
Federal Budget
FEDSTATS (Index to federal agency statistics on line)
National Agricultural Statistics Service
National Center for Education Statistics
National Center for Health Statistics
Office of Management and Budget
Statistics of Income Division (Internal Revenue Service)
U.S. Census Bureau
U.S. Federal Election Commission


Political Methodology Section, APSA
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


Research Links

MIT Library
Social Sciences Citation Index (through the "Web of Science")

Finding Survey Questions and Results