Students striving to find more meaning in statistics should be
able to enroll in a double course winter quarter catered to that
need.
The double course will consist of Comparative Politics taught by
political science professor Dan Posner, and Statistics and Data
Analysis taught by political science professor John Zaller.
Although each course will have separate lectures and will be
graded as separate classes, they must be enrolled in as
corequisites. Students enrolled in the double course will have one
two-hour section each week that will cover material from both
courses.
“What’s nice about that is (students) will have the
same TA, skilled in the statistics side and in the comparative
politics side,” Posner said.
The idea behind the double course is to integrate material
taught in each of the classes in order to give more meaning to the
subject matter.
“When I’ve taught I’ve tried to introduce
students to the idea that comparative politics is to look for
patterns,” Posner said, adding that the best way to look for
patterns would be to gather data on a particular issue and do
simple statistical analysis with the data.
Posner said teaching politics was often frustrating because
students lacked the background in statistics necessary to perform
the analyses.
Posner said Zaller was frustrated by the same problem but from
an opposite standpoint.
“(Zaller’s) job is to teach students basic
statistics,” Posner said, “but he doesn’t have
the time to teach them why these numbers have any
meaning.”
From his experience working with graduate students on
statistics, Zaller deduced students would not really internalize
statistics unless the numbers were related to subject matter of
their interest.
Zaller said in the past, he felt as if after the final exams
“students were doing a memory dump in the hall and never
thinking about it again.”
From a teaching perspective, Zaller said students have more
incentive to learn statistics when the numbers are given context
and this is what he hopes the new double course will
accomplish.
“I think that would work,” said Lorena Nuño, a
second-year political science student currently taking statistics.
“(The two courses) are kind of based on the same thing, so
you’re applying statistics to the actual
situation.”
The politics segment of the double course will focus on content
and will give a context to the numbers presented in statistics.
The statistics portion will provide students with the necessary
skills to back up what they learn in the politics course with
evidence based on statistical analysis.
Professor Michael Thies teaches Comparative Politics and thinks
the double course is a great idea because it coordinates the
material of the two courses.
“I think we don’t have enough integration in the
curriculum, and knowing they take it simultaneously, each faculty
member knows what the students are doing in the other class,”
Thies said.
Thies said there would also be less repetition in subject matter
covered by the two courses, making teaching a lot easier.
Michael Reyes, a third-year political science student taking
comparative politics this quarter, liked the idea of fusing related
coursework.
“They complement each other, the two classes,” Reyes
said. “A lot of topics relate to (both subjects) … like
globalization.”
Both Zaller and Posner said while the double course is
experimental, they hope the course will be offered again if it is
successful.
Some possible complaints about the course, Zaller said, would
involve less flexibility in scheduling for students. Students who
have previously taken one of the two courses will not be able to
take the new double course and since the courses are corequisites,
students will not have the option of taking only one.
To enroll in the double course for winter quarter, students
should call (310) 825-3862, or e-mail Collette Niland at
niland@polisci.ucla.edu or Kathy Escobedo at
escobedo@polisci.ucla.edu.