vibes-based causal identification identification (DAGs)
This one does assume some calculus so might be for the more advanced students looking solidify their fundamentals. QSS is awesome as an intro.
Reminder that I have a textbook on an introduction to mathematical statistics and regression, designed for first year PhD students in poli sci, but maybe useful to others. Let me know if you use it and have feedback! mattblackwell.github.io/gov2002-book/
Unfortunately no. Wish we could offer it, though. Would be really helpful!
There are many things that I'm omitting here, but it's been really fun to teach the class. If anything would be helpful for your classes, please feel free to take from my stuff liberally. Here's the GitHub for the course website: github.com/gov50-f23/go...
Website for Harvard's Gov 50 in Fall 2023. Contribute to gov50-f23/gov50-f23.github.io development by creating an account on GitHub.
6. An enthusiastic and welcoming attitude Doing "coding" and "math" is really intimidating to many students, especially those in the social sciences. Providing support and building excitement about their accomplishments goes a long way.
5. R coding cheatsheet I made a coding cheatsheet (in quarto) that has a quick reference to all the coding techniques we use in the class and a brief example/explanation. This made it much faster for students versus searching through slide pdfs.
4. Real-world data We use data from amazing published papers to give students a sense of what fun projects you can actually do in quantitative political science
(Obviously this support structure is partly possible because of the resources of a place like Harvard. But I would check to see if there's money to hire peer tutors for classes like this. Science/math classes sometimes have them, so definitely check if you can piggyback)
3. Support structure We provide scaffolded work so students have ample time working w/ support before they start on their own. They do code tutorials before class, code in lectures and in section with our amazing TAs, & get help at peer tutoring sessions called study halls.