Dr Jordan Claridge SAR 5.05

This course is compulsory on the BSc in Economic History. This course is not available as an outside option nor to General Course students.

This course provides students a brief, non-technical introduction to the quantitative methods that economic historians use to understand the past. It assumes no prior statistical knowledge or experience. It will teach students basic statistics (descriptive statistics and inferential statistics) and how to implement and visualise these statistics with Excel. These skills will be essential for the independent research projects conducted in the second and third year and are highly desired skills on the job market.

This course is delivered through a combination of classes and lectures totalling a minimum of 11 hours across Michaelmas Term. Teaching may be delivered through a combination of virtual classes and flipped-lectures delivered as short online videos. This course includes a reading week in Week 6 of Michaelmas Term.’

The formative coursework will consist of weekly exercises to give students practise with Excel and the methods being taught in the lecture. There will be a formative take home exam over the reading week in Michaelmas Term, to test students' knowledge of the material.

Hudson, Pat and Mina Ishizu, History by Numbers (London, 2016).

Feinstein, Charles and Mark Thomas, Making History Count: A Primer in Quantitative Methods for Historians (Cambridge, 2002).

There is no summative assessment for this course.

Department: Economic History

Total students 2019/20: 35

Average class size 2019/20: 12

Capped 2019/20: No

Value: Non-credit bearing