The teacher will be announced at the start of the course.

This course is compulsory on the Master of Public Policy. This course is not available as an outside option.

An introduction to basic concepts for use and awareness on MPP core courses. The course incorporates a number of sessions delivered prior to the programme, and during Welcome, to give students of all abilities a general introduction key areas of the programme. This includes the principles and reasoning underlying quantitative methods for public policy analysis as well as an introduction to the topic of public policy.

Exact hours of teaching will be confirmed when the programme Welcome schedules are prepared.

There will be some informal opportunity to assess progress during this introductory (pre-sessional) course but the nature of this course means that there is no formal formative work.

Notes covering the course material will be made available at the beginning of the course.

For a basic and accessible introduction to quantitative methods for public policy, students are encouraged to read Charles Whelan's 'Naked Statistics' prior to the start of the course.

Students may refer to other introductory books for further background reading. For the statistics part, please see Newbold, Carlson and Thorne 'Statistics for Business and Economics' (6th edition), or Wonnacott and Wonnacott 'Introductory Statistics for Business and Economics' (4th edition). For the maths part, please see Ian Jacques' 'Mathematics for Economics and Business' (5th edition), or Wisniewski's 'Introductory Mathematical Methods in Economics' (2nd edition). It is not necessary to purchase these books however for this course.

There is no formal assessment attached to this course.