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SOCIOL 303-DL : Analysis and Interpretation of Social Data

Description

This course will introduce students to the techniques, concepts, and terminology used in the quantitative analysis of social data. The course will be grounded in practical exercises in which students will analyze real-world data on health disparities, police interactions with the public, party politics, and other important social issues. Students will learn how to find and access public-use social data and how to import, clean, merge, summarize, and visualize such data in the programming language R. Students will also learn the fundamental principles of probability underlying inferential statistics, or the process of using sample data to make inferences about broader populations. Finally, students will become fluent in the language of statistics, enabling them to discuss their own research in a precise and professional manner and to understand and evaluate quantitative research done by others. Prerequisite: none.

This course is conducted completely online. A technology fee will be added to tuition.

Note: This course is limited to School of Professional Studies students only. Undergraduate students in other schools at Northwestern are not permitted to enroll in this course.