LAW26 — Introductory Statistical Analysis for Law, Policy, and Justice Studies
Units: 4 Hours: 72 hours LEC Grade Options: Letter Grade General Education: Delta Area 2; Cal-GETC Area 2 Term Typically Every term This course provides the tools, concepts, and framework for students to become sophisticated consumers of quantitative evidence and social science through an introduction to the basic statistical methods and analyses commonly used in law, policy, and justice studies and applications, including in sociological research, civil rights litigation, public policy formulation, and social justice advocacy. It provides statistical methodological training and skills through the examination of social and cultural manifestations of truth and the interdisciplinary study of class, ethnicity, gender, and race, including a primary focus on one of the following ethnic groups in the United States: Asian Americans, African Americans, Latino-Americans/ Latinx/ Chicanos, and Native Americans. It also relates lessons of quantitative thinking to topical materials that are accessible and relevant to working for justice and social change. Students learn techniques to distinguish credible statistical evidence from misleading statistical claims. Statistical methods to be discussed include use of probability and predictive techniques, as well as hypothesis testing, to facilitate decision-making in the justice system and in the fields of law and public policy. Topics to be discussed include descriptive and inferential statistics, hypothesis testing, probability and sampling