SOC 109 Statistical Analysis of Social Data

Summer 2006 Prof. Akos Rona-Tas

MWF 4:00 -5:50 SSB 488

CENTR 207 Office Hours: M W 3:00-4:00

or by appointment

aronatas@ucsd.edu

858-534-4699

This course will teach you three important skills:

1. a way of systematic reasoning and decision making with the help of numeric evidence

2. elementary statistics, or ways of manipulating, organizing numbers so that they reveal patterns hidden in your data

3. basic computer skills so that you can handle large amounts of information.

There will be a midterm and a final, both closed book and notes. There will be three computer assignments. Late computer assignments will not be credited. You must do all the work yourself including obtaining the output.

Final grades for this course will be assigned as follows:

Computer assignments 35%

Midterm exam 30%

Final exam 35%

The textbook for the course is Chava Frankfort-Nachmias and Anna Leon-Guerrero, Social Statistics for a Diverse Society, 4^rd edition. It is available at the UCSD bookstore. Your computer assignments will require that you use SPSS for Windows, a statistical package for the PC. Manuals for SPSS are available in the computer lab in Solis Hall, but the program itself is user friendly and provides extended on-line help. You can also find most of what you need at the end of each chapter

The course has a Web site

http://weber.ucsd.edu/~aronatas/s109s01.htm

where you will find this syllabus and all three assignments. You just have to click on

Assignment 1

Assignment 2

Assignment 3