Michael Coppedge
T R 9:30-10:45 coppedge.1@nd.edu
Galvin Life Science Center 283
Professor, Political Science
Office in 238 Hesburgh Center www.nd.edu/~mcoppedg/crd/
Hours: M 2:30-4:00, Th 9:30-11:00
This course is an introduction to political, economic, and social issues through the medium of visual displays. This kind of course has become feasible because data are now abundant and easy to access and software for displaying and analyzing data are available and easy to use. The ability to examine and display data is an increasingly valuable skill in many fields.
However, this skill must be complemented by the ability to interpret visual displays orally, and by a commitment to use data responsibly: to reveal, rather than slant or distort, the truth. We will discuss examples concerning climate change, development, economic performance, social policy, democracy, voting, public opinion, and conflict, but the main emphasis is on helping you explore many facets of an issue of particular interest to you. You will learn to manage social science data and produce your own graphics to describe and explain political, social, or economic relationships. The graphics will include line and bar graphs, 2D and 3D scatterplots, motion charts, maps, and others. The seminar will culminate in a public workshop at which you will present your discoveries to a larger audience.
Computing. Starting February 10, it would be helpful for you to bring a laptop to class, if you have one, so you can follow instructions for producing graphs. Either PC or Mac will be fine. However, a laptop is not essential, as handouts will provide step-by-step instructions that you can practice at a desktop machine after class.
I will distribute free copies of SPSS software for you to use. You can install this on only one machine. I have not assigned reading on learning to use SPSS, as I will walk you through everything in class and it is practically self-explanatory and has excellent help files.
However, you may sometimes want to consult a good web reference work on SPSS, such as http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/spss/topics/ data_management.htm
. The library also has copies of several handbooks on SPSS.
Starting March 22, we will begin using a different software package, Stata. You will need to buy this from http://www.stata.com/order/new/edu/gradplans/gp-campus.html
. Or you can order by phone: 800-782-8272. There are several options ranging in price from $32 to
$179, depending on whether you want a 6-month, year, or perpetual license, and how large a dataset you want to be able to use. I recommend an annual license for Small Stata 12 ($49) or Stata/IC 12 ($98); you can always use a campus cluster machine for large datasets.
My website will have a page of links to many of the on-line datasets we will be using.
Readings. Two textbooks are available for purchase at the bookstore:
 Thomas L. Friedman, Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0 : Why We Need a Green Revolution—
and How It Can Renew America (New York: Picador, 2009). ISBN 978-0312428921
 Edward R. Tufte, Visualizing Quantitative Information, 2 nd ed. (Cheshire, CT:
Graphics Press, 2001). ISBN 978-0961392147
 See “Computing,” above, about ordering Stata software.
There is no course packet. Articles in journals are available through the library's e-journal tab; chapters in books (other than the two textbooks) are available in e-reserves. Any exceptions are explained below. "Recommended" readings are not required, and therefore are not usually on reserve.

2
Grading: The College of Arts and Letters mandates that two thirds of the grade must be based on oral components, such as class discussion, debates, presentations, or other exercises. Three oral activities will get specific grades totaling 34 percent:
 Presentation of two Friedman chapters on Jan. 20 or 25 (5%)
 Oral statement of interest on Jan. 27 (9%)
 Oral presentation of your final portfolio (20%)
Another 33 percent of the grade will be “Participation,” which is defined broadly to include class discussions and several otherwise ungraded assignments – Shadow critique of
Friedman chapters (Jan. 20 or 25), Reporting a deceptive graphic (Feb. 3), Descriptive graphic, bad and improved (Feb. 24), Scatterplots (Mar. 3), Graph matrices or 3D plot (Mar.
24), Motion chart (Mar. 31 or Apr. 7), and Map (Apr. 19). This participation grade will be based on taking these assignments seriously, completing them on time, and presenting them effectively (which tends to require doing high-quality work). This standard recognizes that the exploration of data is a learning process that often leads to mistakes, false starts, and blind alleys; it requires many drafts, critiques, and revisions. I encourage you to meet with me outside of class to get periodic feedback on your participation.
One third of the grade is based on non-oral work: 8% for the written statement of interest (Jan. 27), and 25% for a portfolio of your graphics. Throughout the semester you will create and present drafts of your graphics, which I (and your classmates) will critique, but not grade. Only the final portfolio, containing your revised and improved work, will be graded. Note that the portfolio gets separate grades for the final draft (25%) and your oral presentation of it (20%), so 45% of the grade is based on the portfolio. Creating and presenting an excellent portfolio of your own data explorations is therefore your most important task in this class.
I prefer electronic submission to dropboxes in the CourseWare folder for this class, accessible through WebFile. I reserve the right to lower your final grade by up to a sign if you have more than two unexcused absences. Work that goes significantly beyond what was required may receive extra credit. All graded work must be your own, but I encourage you to seek help from me or your classmates on any ungraded assignments.
Schedule of Readings and Assignments
January 13. Introduction
The power of information distilled into images; the responsibility that comes with it; technologies that transcend the printed page; the need for oral presentation skills; exploratory vs. confirmatory analysis.
Issues
January 18. Anecdotes vs. data
 Thomas L. Friedman, Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0 (New York: Picador, 2009), chapters
1-3.
Friedman makes many sweeping claims. What kinds of evidence does he use? Does it have to be systematic to be convincing? Which claims are facts and which are his opinions?
Which are beliefs and which are values? Which describe and which explain?
*We’ll also make team and chapter assignments for next class.*
January 20. Normative vs. empirical claims
 Friedman, Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0, selected chapters.

3
Blue team members will present their chapters, summarizing their main arguments and focusing on which claims are normative and which are empirical. Gold team members will
“shadow” these presentations, filling in points missed and challenging where necessary.
January 25. Description vs. explanation
 Friedman, Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0, selected chapters.
Gold team members will present their chapters, summarizing their main arguments and focusing on which claims are descriptive and which are explanatory. Blue team members will “shadow” these presentations, filling in points missed and challenging where necessary.
January 27. Statements of interest
Before class, you must submit to your dropbox a written three-page statement of interest that a) poses a series of empirical questions (either descriptive or explanatory) about politics, society, economics, or some other approved topic and b) identifies the values that motivate them. In class, you will orally present your questions and values. Your goal is to persuade everyone that your proposed exploration is important and intriguing. I will follow up with suggested readings and data sources.
Graphical integrity
February 1. Graphic deceptions
 Edward R. Tufte, Visualizing Quantitative Information, 2 nd ed. (Cheshire, CT:
Graphics Press, 2001), chapters 1 & 2.
 James D. Orcutt and J. Blake Turner, “Shocking Numbers and Graphic Accounts:
Quantified Images of Drug Problems in the Print Media,” Social Problems 40:2 (May
1993): 190-206.

For next class: find a deceptive graphic and a way to show it to the class.
**Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” will be shown one evening before next class. If you can’t watch it, study the graphs in the book version.**
February 3. Drawing lines
Come prepared to discuss whether the graphics in “An Inconvenient Truth” were deceptive or merely effective. Where do we draw the line? We will also look at political cartoons and campaign ads ( http://pcl.stanford.edu/campaigns/2008/ ).
 Recommended: http://danspira.com/2009/07/08/same-data-different-graphs/
Data
February 8. Types of data
How do social scientists “measure” intangible things? What are the different levels of measurement? What are validity and reliability? How reliable are our data?
 W. Phillips Shively, The Craft of Political Research, 6th ed. (Prentice-Hall, 2004), chapter 3.
 Mitchell Seligson, “Improving the Quality of Survey Research in Democratizing
Countries,” PS, Political Science and Politics (January 2005): 51-56.

4
 (Skim) Jonathan E. Sinton, “Accuracy and Reliability of China’s Energy Statistics,”
China Economic Review 12:7 (2001): 373-383.
 Recommended: Carol S. Carson, “The History of the United States National Income and
Product Accounts: The Development of an Analytic Tool,” Review of Income and Wealth 21
(1975): 153-181.
February 10. Looking at data in Excel
I have put together several datasets on the environment, US economic performance, public opinion and voting, and economic development and democratization around the world. We will examine each dataset to see how datasets are structured, how we manage them, how variables can be transformed and recoded, how observations may be sorted or selected, and why it is useful to inspect the data. We will also tour the Internet to see where additional datasets can be found. Please schedule an appointment to consult me about where you can find data relevant for your project.
Graphical Aesthetics
February 15. Beautiful data
 Tufte, Visual Display of Quantitative Information, chapters 3-7. Please bring the book to class so we can examine graphs together.
 Recommended: Andrew Gelman, Jonathan P. Kastellec, and Yair Ghitza, “Beautiful Political
Data,” chapter 19 in Toby Segaran and Jeff Hammerbacher, eds., Beautiful Data: The Stories
Behind Elegant Data Solutions (Sebastopol, Calif.: O’Reilly Media, 2009), pp. 323-333;
Susanne Bleisch, Jason Dykes and Stephan Nebiker, “Evaluating the Effectiveness of
Representing Numeric Information Through Abstract Graphics in 3D Desktop Virtual
Environments,” The Cartographic Journal 45:3 (August 2008): 216-226.
Data in one or two dimensions
February 17. Survey data
How survey datasets are different. What you can learn from simple analyses. Handling data in SPSS (weighting, filtering, recoding, labeling, missing values). Converting datasets into
SPSS format.
 Pew Global Attitudes Project, “Global Economic Gloom – China and India Notable
Exceptions,” (Pew Research Center for the People and the Press: June 12, 2008), pp.
1-68. This report is saved as “PewGlobalAtts2008.pdf” in the course folder.
February 22. Descriptive graphics in SPSS
How to do bar and pie charts, histograms (with normal curves), boxplots, and line graphs.
 Pew Global Attitudes Project, “Global Economic Gloom – China and India Notable
Exceptions,” (Pew Research Center for the People and the Press: June 12, 2008), pp.
69-146.
February 24. Why we revise
Present two versions of a descriptive graphic: the SPSS default version and your customized improvement.
 Selection (TBA) from Stephen Few, Now You See It: Simple Visualization Techniques
for Quantitative Analysis (Analytics Press, 2009).
 Perceptual Edge’s examples: http://www.perceptualedge.com/examples.php
.
March 1. The Scatterplot

5
So far we have been looking at how values change as a function of time. Today we consider what we can learn by looking at how values change as a function of other variables. Why, nevertheless, correlation is not causation.
 Michael Friendly and Daniel Denis, “The Early Origins and Development of the
Scatterplot,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 41:2 (Spring 2005):
103-130.
March 3. Your scatterplots
All present, interpret, and critique scatterplots, using data relevant to your project.
Data in three dimensions
March 15. Three D
Adding a third variable to our graphics literally adds a new dimension. This enables us to illustrate more complex relationships. There are 3D versions of scatterplots, bar charts, and line graphs, although representing them on a flat 2D page or screen is challenging, so other media are more revealing.
 Michael J. Rosenfeld, “Racial, Educational and Religious Endogamy in the United
States: A Comparative Historical Perspective,” Social Forces 87:1 (September 2008):
1-31.
March 17. Small multiples
 Tufte, Visual Display of Quantitative Information, chapters 8 and 9
 Michael D. Maltz, “Visualizing Data in Criminal Justice,” (Department of Sociology,
Ohio State University), online ms., accessed Jan. 8, 2010
( http://sociology.osu.edu/mdm/VisualizingCrime.pdf
).
March 22. Introducing Stata
This is a workshop on a statistical package that gives you many more options for producing graphics.
 Stata graph intro: http://www.stata.com/bookstore/pdf/g_graph_intro.pdf
March 24. Your graph matrices or 3D plots
All present, interpret, and critique latest graphs, using data relevant to your project.
Motion Charts: Getting closer to causation.
March 29. Motion charts
Hans Rosling’s Gapminder Foundation developed a Javascript application it called the
Trendalyzer to animate scatterplots. Google bought this application and has made a simpler version available as a “motion chart.” Today I will walk you through the process of creating your own motion chart in Google Docs.
 Bring to class a dataset in Excel that requires considerably less than 1 meg of memory.
 Before class, create a Google Docs account at docs.google.com.
March 31 and April 7. Your motion charts I & II
In these sessions we will troubleshoot your motion charts, explore what they can tell you, and discuss ways of presenting this kind of information effectively.
Maps

6
April 12. Geospatial dimensions
Maps can add two or more spatial dimensions to our displays. Most serious mapmakers use the mapping software suite arcGIS, which can take years to master. But there are some easier ways to make the simple color-coded maps, called choropleths, that are common in political science. We will start with a Google gadget called Heatmap. I will also demonstrate a way to make a movie from a series of map images. (Readings on next page…)
 Menno-Jan Kraak, “Why Maps Matter in GIScience,” The Cartographic Journal 46:1
(March 2006): 82-89.
 (Skim) Graham J.G. Upton, “Picturing the 1992 British General Election,” Journal of
the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (Statistics in Society) 157:2 (1994): 231-252.
 (Skim) John O'Loughlin, Michael D. Ward, et al., "The Diffusion of Democracy, 1946-
1994," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 88:4 (December 1998):
545-74.
April 14. Better maps
We can produce higher-quality maps with the Stata module spmap.
 Maurizio Pisati, “Simple Thematic Mapping,” The Stata Journal 4:4 (2004): 361-378.
 Kevin Crow and William Gould, “How do I graph data onto a map with spmap?” FAQ page ( http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/graphics/spmap.html
).
April 19. Presentation of maps
April 21. Miscellaneous visualizations
There are many other kinds of visual analysis. Here are a few.
 (Skim) Ulrik Brandes, Patrick Kenis, Jörg Raab, Volker Schneider and Dorothea
Wagner, “Explorations into the Visualization of Policy Networks,” Journal of
Theoretical Politics 11:1 (1999): 75-106.
 (Skim) Lars-Erik Cederman and Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, “Conquest and Regime
Change: An Evolutionary Model of the Spread of Democracy and Peace”
International Studies Quarterly 48 (2004): 603-629.
 ggobi ( http://www.ggobi.org/ ). This is a very flexible (and free!) program for exploratory data visualization.
 R is one of the most powerful and flexible statistical packages. It is free and opensource, so its capabilities are continually being extended. Browse the R Graphics
Gallery: http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/thumbs.php
to see if there is a kind of graph you would like to adapt for your project. I am a novice at R, but I can help you get started.
April 23. Critiques of practice presentations
April 28. Critiques of practice presentations
TBA: Public Presentations
There is no final exam.