Data analysis (datA)

Syllabus
2019 / 2020

Marian-Gabriel Hancean, Associate Professor, Hab., Ph. D.

Department of Sociology, University of Bucharest
Email: ghancean@gmail.com
Personal webpage: https://sites.google.com/view/hancean

Office hours: by appointment, during the semester

Last update: October, 13, 2019

Objectives
Data analysis (datA) is an introductory course into quantitatively approaching and analyzing
social datasets (but not limited to social data) using R (an open-source statistical programming
environment). The course is focused on the analysis of both attribute (characteristics of units of
observations, e.g. individuals, organizations, animals etc.) and relational data (characteristics of
the relationships between pairs units of observations, e.g. networks of individuals, organizations,
animals etc.). The main objectives are: a) train participants into how to use R in their research
work; b) train participants into exploring the structure of the datasets and fitting linear statistical
models.

Assessment and grading

Class participation 50%
Exercises (homework) 50%

DatA policies

Attendance is mandatory. You should notify me, on advance, if not attending any particular class
(using my email account ghancean@gmail.com). Moreover, you are expected to comply with
University of Bucharest policy on academic integrity (cheating and plagiarism are completely
forbidden).

Contact
Students are encouraged to contact me at ghancean@gmail.com. Office hours are only by
appointment and can be arranged by email.

Lab structure
Meeting #1 - October, 15. Introductory meeting [datA course presentation; individual presentation of
research interests]

Meeting #2 – October, 22. Introduction to R [the language: numeric, arithmetic, assignment and vectors;
matrices and arrays; non-numeric values]
References:
Davies, T.M. 2016. The Book of R. A First Course in Programming and Statistics. No Starch Press:
San Francisco (Chapters 1 – 4)

1
Meeting #3 – October, 22. Introduction to R [the language: lists and dataframes; special values, classes,
coercion; reading and writing files]
References:
Davies, T.M. 2016. The Book of R. A First Course in Programming and Statistics. No Starch Press:
San Francisco (Chapters 5, 6 & 8)

Meeting #4 – October, 29. Elementary statistics with R [describing raw data; summary statistics]
References:
Davies, T.M. 2016. The Book of R. A First Course in Programming and Statistics. No Starch Press:
San Francisco (Chapter 13)

Meeting #5 – November, 5. Relational event network with eventnet. Special guest: Juergen Lerner
(professor of algorithms at University of Konstanz, Germany)
Presentation is given at The Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, Schitu Măgureanu 9, Council
room, ground floor – 17:30 – 19:00.

Meeting #6 – November, 12. Basic data visualization [bar plots, histograms, violins, pie charts, scatter
plots]
References:
Davies, T.M. 2016. The Book of R. A First Course in Programming and Statistics. No Starch Press:
San Francisco (Chapter 14)

Meeting #7 – November, 19. Attribute and relational data set analysis [simple linear regression]
References:
https://uc-r.github.io/linear_regression
https://kateto.net/netscix2016.html

Meeting #8 – November, 26. Multiple linear regression

References:
https://uc-r.github.io/linear_regression

Meeting #9 – December, 3. Ways to address instances of assumption violations [robust regression;

robust SE]
References:
https://stats.idre.ucla.edu/r/dae/robust-regression/

Required readings
Davies, T.M. 2016. The Book of R. A First Course in Programming and Statistics. No Starch Press:
San Francisco