QR 170: First year seminar: Causation
QR 170 is a First Year Seminar offered through the Quantitative Reasoning Program in Fall 2013. This course is no longer offered but may return in the future.
Course Description:
Do you believe that smoking causes lung cancer? What evidence justifies your belief? When lawyers provide free services to indigent clients, are those clients better off? Is online education effective? Correlations are reported in the news every day. However, demonstrating that a phenomenon causes another phenomenon – or even asking a sensible causal question – is often difficult. This seminar introduces a framework for conceptualizing causal questions and statistical tools for addressing those questions. We will explore the development of randomized experiments in the early twentieth century, along with current methods for answering causal questions without randomizing. Examples will come from fields such as medicine, public policy, law, education, and psychology. Students will propose, design, and conduct studies that estimate causal effects.
This course fulfills the QR and mathematical modeling distribution requirements. Fulfillment of the basic skills component of the QR requirement is required. No additional math or statistics background required. Mandatory credit/non-credit.