PUBPOL 2101

Statistics for Public Policy

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2025-2026 Catalog.

Statistics for Public Policy introduces basic statistical techniques used by researchers to investigate social, economic, and political phenomena. Topics include data presentation and descriptive statistics, measures of central tendency and dispersion, random variables and their probability distributions, joint and conditional distributions, expected value, conditional expectation, statistical sampling and inference, interval estimation and confidence intervals, hypothesis testing using t distributions, correlation, and bivariate regression analysis. A mandatory review section accompanies the course lectures. In problem sets and exams, students calculate statistics by hand to develop familiarity with data analysis. They also learn and apply basic commands using Stata statistical software.

Enrollment Information REF-F25 Enrollment limited to: Brooks school undergraduate students.

Distribution Requirements (MQL-AG, OPHLS-AG), (MQR-HE)

Last 3 terms offered 2024FA, 2023FA, 2022FA

Learning Outcomes REF-FA25

• Employ basic numeric and visualization tools to describe data.
• Apply inferential statistical analysis to policy-relevant research questions.
• Conduct statistical evaluations of US census data in computing environment.
• Critique methodological approaches to social scientific research.

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