Prerequisites: None

Exam: No Exam

Empirical data, and statistical and empirical tools and concepts, are increasingly used in litigation, regulation, and legal policymaking and research. This course aims at providing students with basic training in using statistical and empirical tools. No prior work in empirical methods or statistics will be required or assumed.

The course is hands-on and applied in nature. Students will learn to use a standard statistical/empirical software package and subsequently use it to analyze data.

Topics that will be covered include descriptive statistics and graphs, statistical inferences and hypothesis testing, correlation, regressions (both simple regression and multiple regression), and distinguishing between correlation and causation. Students will use actual data, and law-related examples will be used to illustrate the concepts and tools taught.

There will be no exam. Instead, students will be required to submit ungraded exercises and to conduct an empirical analysis of a dataset, and grading will be based on the student’s empirical analysis.

The course will meet for 18 two-hour sessions, which will all meet during the time slot of the course and will be concentrated during the first two months of the semester.