Washington University Courses (Arts & Sciences)

PolSci 363.	Quantitative Political Methodology	Last Offered: FL05
This is an introduction to research methodology and quantitative analysis for social scientists. Students will be introduced to the logic of social scientific inquiry, and to the basic statistical tools used to study politics. Students will learn and apply the following to answer substantive questions: measurement, descriptive analysis, correlation, graphical analysis, hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, analysis of variance, and regression analysis. Major components of the course include learning how to collect, manage, and analyze data using computer software, and how to effectively communicate to others results from statistical analyses. Students will work collaboratively on research projects where they pose their own questions, design a study, collect and analyze the data, and present their findings in a research paper.
Resources	Syllabus | Telesis

PolSci 571.	Quantitative Methods of Analysis I	Last Offered: SP03
This course is an introduction to political methodology, focusing on probability theory and elementary statistical inference. Particular attention will be paid to distribution theory, hypothesis testing, and confidence intervals.
Resources	Syllabus

PolSci 572.	Quantitative Methods in Political Analysis II: Linear Models	Last Offered: FL03
This course is a second course in political methodology. The primary topic will be the linear regression model, in both scalar and matrix form. The course will cover estimation, inference, specification, diagnostic tools, data management, and statistical computation.
Resources	Syllabus

PolSci 582.	Quantitative Political Methodology II: Maximum Likelihood	Last Offered: SP06
This is a second course in political methodology covering advanced methods of statistical analysis for political and other social scientists. Covers maximum likelihood estimation for various cross-sectional, time series, and measurement models.
Resources	Syllabus | Course Website

PolSci 5732.	Topics in QPM: Bayesian Inference	Last Offered: FL04
Advanced methods of statistical analysis for political and other social scientists. Covers applied Bayesian inference and Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for various cross-sectional, time series, and measurement models. Particular attention is paid to statistical computation.
Resources	Syllabus | Telesis

Washington University Courses (Law)

Law 551B.	Social Scientific Research for Lawyers	Next Offered: FL08
The purpose of this course is to provide law students with the ability to conduct and evaluate empirical legal research. By empirical legal research I mean scholarship "based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation rather than theory or pure logic." The course will cover the process of social scientific inquiry, research design, and elementary data analysis. The course grade will be based on the evaluation of weekly written assignments. (This course is not graded anonymously because the professor works with students on written work throughout the semester.)
Resources	Syllabus | Course Website

Law 760S.	The Politics of the U.S. Supreme Court (Seminar)	Last Offered: SP08
This seminar has two basic purposes: to introduce students to the state of the art in legal and social scientific studies of the U.S. Supreme Court and to cover a series of particular topics, with emphasis on major controversies in the field. Topics include appointments to the Court; the internal deliberative processes of the justices in reaching their decisions; relations between and among the Court and the elected branches of government; and the impact of judicial decisions. Course materials will be drawn from original published studies. The seminar will meet weekly to discuss the assigned readings. Students are expected to participate actively in the seminar discussion. Each student will be required to write a 1-2 page reaction memorandum four times during the semester. These memoranda will be used to guide class discussion. Each student will also write three 5-6 page essays that require the student to apply theories and findings from the literature to contemporary problems. (This course is not graded anonymously because the professor works with students on written work throughout the semester.)
Resources	Syllabus | Course Website

Law 736S.	Law and Politics (Seminar)	Last Offered: SP06
This seminar will focus on the interplay between law and politics; we will organize the seminar as workshop and will focus on contemporary problems and issues. For purposes of discussion, we will divide the semester into 7 two-week blocks. In the first week of each block, we will discuss a paper authored by a nationally well-known scholar and in second week we will invite the scholar to campus to present his/her work to the class for further discussion. As far as substance, we will focus on quantitative and not qualitative studies in the context of law and politics. Students will write 7 short papers addressing the issues we discuss in class; to assure its interdisciplinary nature, the seminar will be open to both law students and graduate students in the social sciences.
Addl. Info	Co-Taught With Lee Epstein and Nancy Staudt
Resources	Course Materials

Workshops

CELS08	Conducting Empirical Legal Scholarship Workshop	Last Offered: SU08
The Conducting Empirical Legal Scholarship workshop is for law school faculty interested in learning about empirical research. Leading empirical scholars Lee Epstein and Andrew Martin will teach the workshop, which provides the formal training necessary to design, conduct, and assess empirical studies, and to use statistical software (Stata) to analyze and manage data. Participants need no background or knowledge of statistics to enroll in the workshop.
Addl. Info	Co-Taught with Lee Epstein | Co-Sponsored with Northwestern University School of Law
Resources	Course Information | Course Materials

ACELS07	Conducting Empirical Legal Scholarship: The Advanced Course	Next Offered: FL08
The Advanced Course is for law school faculty interested in furthering their training in empirical research. The workshop is designed for those who have some experience with empirical legal research, and an understanding of elementary statistics (at the level taught in the introductory workshop). Topics to be covered will include: multiple regression, regression models for limited dependent variables, presenting results from non-linear models, data visualization and graphics, and matching methods for causal inference.
Addl. Info	Co-Taught with Lee Epstein | Co-Sponsored with Northwestern University School of Law
Resources	Course Information | Course Materials

EITM	Theoretical and Methodological Foundations	Last Offered: SU08
Although most participants in the Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models (EITM) Summer Institute know the basics of rational choice theory and statistical analysis, it is useful to review and supplement some basic techniques from a standpoint that will prepare participants for the advanced seminars, and for the general pro ject of uniting game theoretic and statistical tools. The Foundations seminar presents important varieties of rational choice models, specifically spatial voting models and non- cooperative game theory, in a form that emphasizes the techniques by which these models can be used to generate testable implications through rigorous analysis of outcome and equilibrium correspondences. In Theoretical and Methodological Foundations our goal is to introduce an integrated view of game theory and statistical analysis that lends itself generally to the generation and testing of hypotheses. In particular, we examine: deriving testable predictions from game theoretic models, sources of statistical variation in game theoretic models, theoretical implications for statistical properties, statistical techniques suitable for testing those implications, and common useful inferences and hypothesis tests based on game-theoretic models.
Addl. Info	Co-Taught with Randall Calvert
Resources	Syllabus | Course Materials