Applied Political Data Analytics

Catalog description

This course introduces students to data analytics in political science, with a focus on developing practical data skills for applied research and real-world problem solving. Students will acquire foundational Python programming skills for analyzing and visualizing political data, including polling data, survey responses, and political text. This course will cover the challenges of working with messy, real-world datasets, and provide students with tools and techniques for data cleaning and validation. This course will place a particular emphasis on applied Natural Language Processing (NLP), with the goal of equipping students with methods to extract and quantify information from unstructured political texts. By the end of the course, students will be able to apply core data analysis methods to political questions and will have developed transferable skills for work in data science, public policy, and political research. Prerequisites: 15-112 or 02-120 or 15-110