SOC6302: Stats for Sociologists

syllabus

This page contains an outline of the course readings, tutorial topics, lecture materials, and assignments.

Week	Reading	Tutorial	Lecture	Assignment Due
1	📃 Wheelan, Charles. 2014. “What’s the Point?” Pp. 1–14 in Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.	📒 01 Introduction	🎞 R workflow ⌨ code-along-01
2	📃 Gandy, Oscar H. Jr. 2008. “Being a Statistician Means Never Having to Say You’re Certain.” Pp. 295–306 in White Logic, White Methods: Racism and Methodology, edited by T. Zuberi and E. Bonilla-Silva. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.	📒 02 Basic Terminology	🎞 Introduction to Data ⌨ code-along-02
3	📃 Wheelan, Charles. 2014. “Descriptive Statistics: Who Was the Best Baseball Player of All Time?” Pp. 15–35 in Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 📃 Wickham, Hadley, Mine Cetinkaya-Rundel, and Garrett Grolemund. 2023. “Data Transformation.” in R for Data Science: Import, Tidy, Transform, Visualize, and Model Data. Beijing Boston Farnham Sebastopol Tokyo: O’Reilly Media.	📒 03 Descriptive Statistics	🎞 Data Management I ⌨ code-along-03	📝 Milestone 01
4	📃 Wheelan, Charles. 2014. “The Central Limit Theorem.” Pp. 127–42 in Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.	📒 04 Sampling	🎞 Data Management II ⌨ code-along-04
5	📃 Wheelan, Charles. 2014. “Inference: Why My Statistics Professor Thought I Might Have Cheated.” Pp. 143–56 in Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 📃 Wheelan, Charles. 2014. “Polling: How We Know That 64 Percent of Americans Support the Death Penalty.” Pp. 169–79 in Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.	📒 05 Uncertainty	🎞 Statistical Tests I ⌨ code-along-05	📝 Milestone 02
6	📃 Cohen, Philip N. 2025. “Doing Description.” Pp. 43–79 in Citizen Scholar: Public Engagement for Social Scientists. New York: Columbia University Press. 📃 Wasserstein, Ronald L., and Nicole A. Lazar. 2016. “The ASA’s Statement on p-Values: Context, Process, and Purpose.” The American Statistician 70(2):129–33. doi:10.1080/00031305.2016.1154108.	📒 06 Associations	🎞 Statistical Tests II ⌨ code-along-06
7		Midterm
8	📽️ ggplot for plots and graphs 📽️ Visualize your data using ggplot	Final Project Workshop		📝 Milestone 03
9	📃 Cairo, Alberto. 2019. “Charts That Lie by Being Poorly Designed.” Pp. 53–80 in How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 📃 Gagnon, Francis. 2021. “500,000 Dots Is Too Many.” https://chezvoila.com/blog/500k/.	📒 07 Presenting Data	🎞 Table 01 & Figures ⌨ code-along-07
10	📃 Wheelan, Charles. 2014. “Regression Analysis: The Miracle Elixir.” Pp. 185–211 in Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.	📒 08 OLS Regression I	🎞 Regression I ⌨ code-along-08	📝 Milestone 04
11	📃 Allison, Paul D. 1999. “Chapter 1: What Is Multiple Regression.” Pp. 1–24 in Multiple Regression: A Primer. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Pine Forge Press.	📒 09 OLS Regression II	🎞 Table 02 ⌨ code-along-09
12		Flash Presentations
TBD				📝 Research Brief