Political science and international relations

The course aims at providing the basic theory and the essential tools of statistical analysis. Specifically: 1) Knowledge and understanding: upon completion of the course the students will have acquired the knowledge of the key tools of the statistic, from the descriptive methodologies to the basic inferential techniques, specifically: Introductory aspects. Statistical distributions and graphical displays. Summaries of a distribution: means, variability, and other aspects. Bivariate distributions: association, regression, correlation; probability theory; basic concepts; random variables and probability distributions; sampling and sampling distributions; inference. 2) ability to apply knowledge and understanding: upon completion of the course the students will be able to perform a statistical analysis in the field of political sciences, choosing the most approriate tools such as tabular and graphical summaries, statistical indexes, inferential procedures. 3) making judgements: upon completion of the course the students will be able to interpret the results obtained, making a critical evaluation using statistical evidence and sound reasoning. The development of this particular competence stems from the presentation of the applications and the classroom discussions stimulated by the teacher stemming from the examples analysed; 4) Communication skills: upon completion of the course the students will be able to use scientific language adequately to communicate the statistical methodologies employed and the results obtained. This skill will be stimulated by practical sessions and supplementary materials, including traces of exercises. 5) Learning skills: self-learning of new notions and more advanced techniques , using additional materials and bibliography.