Department of Politics, Princeton University
Summer Self-Study: June 14 - August 15
In-Person Component: August 26-30, September 3-6, September 10
Important Dates
Classroom: Corwin 127
Office Hours: 4:00pm-6:00pm (August 26-30 September 3-6), Fisher B16
Instructors:
Faculty Advisor: Kristopher Ramsay, Professor, Department of Politics
Course Discussion Page: https://github.com/orgs/imps-princeton-politics/teams/imps-2019/discussions
Description: This course is designed to prepare incoming Politics Ph.D. students for POL 502 (Mathematics for Political Scientists) and other coursework in Formal & Quantitative Methods. It covers the fundamentals of calculus, probability theory, linear algebra, and real analysis.
The course consists of two parts. The summer component be completed by students remotely and will run from June 14 to August 15. Students will read course material, watch video lectures, and complete weekly problem sets on topics in calculus, probability theory, and linear algebra. The core component will take place in Princeton between August 26 to September 10. Class will meet twice daily and students will complete daily problem sets.
Prerequisites: The course assumes no background knowledge beyond high school algebra. It is self-contained and designed to serve as an introduction or refresher for the material.
Course Goals: The goal of the course is to introduce students to mathematical tools that they will use to develop and evaluate social scientific theory. Our focus is on building the skills necessary to conduct comparative static analysis and empirically test the comparative statics generated by a theory. This also serves as an introduction to thinking mathematically. We will cover a lot of ground, but the course is meant to expose students to topics that will be revisit in greater depth in POL 502, POL 571, and other courses in Formal and Quantitative Methods.
Course Structure: We will post a problem set every Friday during the summer component. The schedule below will contain links to the assignments and relevant video lectures. We encourage students to post questions about the material in the video lectures and the assignments to the course discussion page. We will do our best to answer them quickly. We also encourage students to discuss problems and course material on the discussion page. Please sign up for the course discussion page if you have not already done so.
The core component of the course will meet weekdays between August 26 and September 10 (Labor Day exempted) with a morning session and an afternoon session each day. The morning session will meet from 10:00am to 11:50am, and the afternoon session will meet from 1:30pm to 3:20pm. We will post a daily problem set at the conclusion of each afternoon session in the schedule section below.
Problem Sets: Students are required to complete the weekly problem sets during the summer component and the daily problem sets during the core component. Problem sets during the summer component are due by midnight (EDT) each Thursday (see table of deadlines below). Completed problem sets can be uploaded using the linked Dropbox file requests in the “Due” column of the summer schedule. We understand that summer often features travel and other activities that get in the way of doing math. Please get in touch if you don’t think you’ll be able to submit assignments by their due date, and we’ll work on an alternative assignment schedule for you.
Problem sets during the core component are due by 10:00am the morning after they are distributed. Students are encouraged to work together on the problem sets, but are expected to write up their solutions individually. The camp will conclude with a final exam given in class at TBA.
LaTeX is a typesetting system that will likely become a big part of your life as a graduate student. This summer is a good time to get familiar with it. We ask that you begin submitting typed problem sets by week 3 of the summer component. Below, we provide links to tutorials to help you get started. Feel free to post questions about how to use LaTeX on the course discussion page. Learning is a slog at the beginning, but it will make your life much easier down the road.
Exams:
Grading:
Summer Component
The summer component will follow closely the material in Moore and Siegel’s A Mathematics Course for Political and Social Research. Siegel has produced video lectures to accompany the textbook. We list the relevant book sections and video lectures for each section of the summer component in the table below. We recommend students watch the video lectures before reading the relevant sections of the textbook. However, different parts of the course will likely require different levels of attention depending on each student’s background.
Because Moore and Siegel’s treatment of linear algebra is somewhat terse, we recommend that students who have not previously taken linear algebra purchase Strang’s Introduction to Linear Algebra. Video lectures accompanying Strang’s course are available through MIT’s Open CourseWare, as a supplement to the material in the textbook. We have listed the relevant book chapters in the table below.
| Post | Due | Topic | Video | Reading | Solutions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 14 | Jun 20 | Building Blocks, Functions, Limits, Continuity | MS 1-2 | MS 1-4 | Solutions |
| Jun 21 | Jun 27 | Differentiation | MS 3-4 | MS 5-6 | Solutions |
| Jun 28 | Jul 4 | Integration | MS 5 | MS 7 | Solutions |
| Jul 5 | Jul 11 | Optimization | MS 6 | MS 8 | Solutions |
| Jul 12 | Jul 18 | Probability (Introduction) | MS 7 | MS 9 | Solutions |
| Jul 19 | Jul 25 | Probability (Distribution Functions) | MS 8-9 | MS 10-11 | Solutions |
| Jul 26 | Aug 1 | Scalars, Vectors, and Matrices | MS 10.1-10.6, 10.8 | MS 12.1-12.3.4, 12.4 (S 1, 2.4) | Solutions |
| Aug 2 | Aug 8 | Solving Systems of Equations | MS 11.1-11.5 | MS 13.1-13.2.2 (S 2.1-2.3, 3.1, 3.3-3.4) | Solutions |
| Aug 9 | Aug 15 | Matrix Inversion and Determinants | MS 10.7, 11.6-11.8 | MS 12.3.5-12.3.7, 13.2.3-13.2.4 (S 2.5-2.7, 5) | Solutions |
Core Component
The core component introduces student to logic, set theory, and real analysis. More generally, it serves as an introduction to the language of mathematics. Once these ideas have been introduced, we take the calculus concepts covered in the summer component to a multidimensional environment, introduced in the summer component.
The course will provide students with basic skills necessary to express theoretical ideas in the language of mathematics, formally derive comparative static propositions about those ideas, and marry those propositions to data.
Ross’s Elementary Analysis is a useful companion text to this part of the course. Purchasing the book is not necessary – we will post course notes on this page for all topics covered in the core component.
As mentioned above, we ask that students begin submitting typed problem sets in week 3 of the summer component. That requires learning LaTeX, a typesetting system that facilitates drafting mathematical documents. First thing’s first, you’ll need to download a LaTeX distribution and a text editor suitable for drafting LaTeX documents.
Distributions
Text Editors (Choose One)
Loading Jennifer Pan’s problem set template into your text editor of choice will give you a sense of how .tex documents are constructed. Both TeXmaker and TeXstudio have buttons that will compile your .tex document into a clean .pdf.
The tricky and painful part will be getting comfortable with LaTeX’s syntax. Googling questions about LaTeX syntax will often turn up results on StackExchange, many of which can be very helpful. We suggest spending some time in broader tutorials before diving into specifics.
We have benefited greatly from the materials developed by our predecessors: