Applied Statistics for Public Policy

Course Overview

Learn to critically evaluate statistics used in policy debates, work with real-world public data, and communicate quantitative findings to non-technical audiences. The course emphasizes practical application over mathematical theory, using Microsoft Excel to analyze data on topics of public interest.

This course is adapted from PAF 301 Applied Statistics, which I taught as adjunct faculty in Arizona State University’s School of Public Affairs.

What You’ll Learn

• Statistics in Everyday Life – Identify how statistical claims shape public discourse and policy decisions

• Working with Public Data – Access and analyze US Census Bureau data and other government datasets

• Describing the Social World – Calculate and interpret measures of central tendency, dispersion, and data visualization

• Probability and Inference – Understand sampling, confidence intervals, and hypothesis testing

• Relationships and Associations – Explore correlations and associations between policy-relevant variables

• Regr…