Additional Resources
There is no reading list for this course as such: your lecturer provides slides and videos, and everything else you’ll need (quizzes, problem sets, etc.) is on this site. With that said, there are many outside resources that are helpful for understanding the course material or engaging more deeply with it. Here are some of my favorites.
Summer reading
My suggested summer reading is Naked Statistics by Charles Wheelan. This book provides a light and friendly introduction to some of the main concepts from the course. I will post some reading quiz questions on this material on Canvas.
Further Reading
Data Analysis for Social Science by Llaudet and Imai is a hands-on introduction to data analysis in R. Our course doesn’t involve real data analysis, but the Q-Step component of your politics course does, so this is a good bridge. There’s a copy in the LMH library.
Thinking Clearly with Data by Bueno de Mesquita and Fowler provides a critical evaluation of the kinds of quantitative arguments you’ll frequently encounter in research and the media. While it’s not a traditional textbook, reading it will teach you a lot about probability and statistics along the way.
An Introduction to Probability and Inductive Logic by Ian Hacking is a more philosophical introduction to probability and inductive reasoning. It connects nicely to the induction topic in your first-year General Philosophy. It also helps to draw a connection between probability theory (which concerns sets) and the standard deductive logic that you’ll encounter in The Logic Manual from your Philosophy course.