Dear Colleagues,

I wanted to share with you a free, self-study statistical computing
curriculum <https://www.uscspec.org/applied-data-science-trainings> (in R)
designed specifically for incoming political science doctoral students. The
modules begin with Intro to R and cover data management (dplyr and tidyr
packages) and data visualization (ggplot2). We are still
developing/refining our modules on making publication-grade regression
tables (texreg) and visualizing regression results by plotting coefficients
and various measures of uncertainty.  We hope to post those soon.

These trainings grew out of the research assistant trainings in the Security
and Political Economy (SPEC) Lab <https://www.uscspec.org> at USC. They are
designed to complement traditional coursework in econometrics and
statistics. If students use these materials to get comfortable with
statistical *computing, *then in their econometrics/stats courses they can
focus on the statistical concepts and not on just figuring out how to load
in data and get their R code to run.

Each module contains a series of 5-10 minutes lecture videos on YouTube
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTbXqrMPZrM&list=PLxSt3N9_h1VX93AtChnX1g3PYuPZIAjH1>
and a walkthrough PDF, which explains each function and provides example
code for students to run on their own computers. Then there is a groupwork
assignment, and then a homework assignment. Both the groupwork and the
homework come with detailed answer keys so students can check their work.

All of the exercises use data and examples from political science, and we
hope that a statistical computing curriculum tailored to the needs of
social science PhD students may fill a gap in a lot of political science
doctoral programs.  Introductory quantitative methods courses can be
incredibly labor intensive for faculty and quite intimidating and
challenging for students. Hopefully, by easing students' introduction to
statistical computing, we can free their time, and instructors' time,
during the semester to focus on more conceptual material.

So perhaps this is a curriculum you can share with all your incoming
doctoral students set to arrive this fall!

We are constantly working to improve and update these materials, and
feedback is very welcome. The goal is to make quantitative social science
as accessible as possible -- please help us figure out how we can best
contribute to that!

Warm regards,
Ben Graham

-- 
*******************************
Benjamin A.T. Graham
Associate Professor, Political Science and International Relations
University of Southern California
Principal Investigator, Security and Political Economy (SPEC) Lab
<http://uscspec.org/>
Research Director, LEWIS <http://thelewisregistry.org>
Office Hours Sign-up <https://benjamingraham.youcanbook.me>
Zoom Meetings: https://usc.zoom.us/j/3132676650
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