Time Schedule:
Mark S. Handcock
CS&SS 506
Seattle Campus
Familiarizes graduate students in the social sciences with modern environments for statistical computing. Provides an overview of available resources and a description of fundamental tools used in quantitative courses and doctoral research. Topics include interfaces to Web-based resources, UNIX-based computing, and major statistical packages (R, SPLUS, SAS, and SPLUS). Offered: W.
Class description
This course will familiarize graduate students in the social sciences with modern environments for statistical computing. The emphasis will be on an overview of the resources available to them at the University of Washington and a deeper description of fundamental tools used in research.
The computer is the scientific laboratory of the applied researcher in the social sciences. It plays the same role for the empirical social science research as the traditional laboratories play for physics and chemistry researchers. As such this course should allow the student to develop a degree of comfort and competence “in the lab.”
The primary purpose of this course is to provide graduate students with a common set of core knowledge about computing resources available to them for their class work and doctorial research. This knowledge has two components. The first are primary elements of computing that are necessary to understand so as to make use of the available resources (e.g., interfaces, networking, storage, input/output, numerical computation). The second are the constantly evolving particular resources available to them at UW (e.g., laboratories, data bases and software packages).
Student learning goals
General method of instruction
1 weekly lecture
Recommended preparation
Class assignments and grading
There will be weekly homework and exercises relating to computing and programming. Students will be graded on a scale of 1 to 10 for each homework. As each of the exercises relates to a different aspect of the computing environment (e.g., Basics of UNIX user interface, fundamentals of Splus and SAS programming), students must achieve an acceptable grade on each homework to pass the course.
credit/no credit based on homeworks
