Essential Methodological Tools

4 credits · Graduate

This course presents essential methodological concepts, ideas, and tools students need to know before beginning their study of the formal and quantitative methods tools used in political science research. Topics covered include functions, limits, continuity, calculus, optimization, probability and statistics, and linear algebra. Entire courses are often devoted to each of these topics (e.g., Math 1A-1B, 53, 54; Stat 101, 134, 135), and this course clearly cannot provide an equally comprehensive treatment. Rather, the class selectively focuses on specific mathematical concepts that are most commonly used in applied formal and quantitative work in political science. The goal of the class is to ensure that students have a sufficiently firm understanding of these critical ideas and facility with them that subsequent methods course can build on the foundation.