software
My preferred statistical package and the one I use for teaching is R, which is freely available. A very nice introduction with plenty of examples can be found here: Quick-R – this site does not explain much about the methods and assumes you have some experience using statistical software, but it explains the R quite well. Here you can find a basic R tutorial on video. To install R on your own computer, go to the R project site, click on “CRAN”, then on any of the mirror sites, then on the name of your computer system (Linux, MacOS, or Windows), and then follow the instructions. Initially, you will just need the “base” package.
If you prefer to have a graphical user interface to R, you might want to try to install Rcmdr. You can do this by running R and typing:
install.packages(“Rcmdr”)
library(Rcmdr)
Also check out the GrapheR package, which provides a graphical user interface for plots.
A very nice overview of R functions is provided at Quick R.
Stata is an advanced commercial package for statistical analysis. Slightly easier to use than R, but with a very awkward programming language, and not free. If you want ease of data management, don’t care about paying a lot, and have no aspirations to do anything out of the ordinary with statistics, SPSS might be a good idea.
To make your papers look professional, especially when using any math, I would strongly encourage learning LaTeX. Add Bibtex and you have an excellent system for academic papers. It’s all free. For Windows users, the place to go would be MikTex. (See below for additional links.) In case you are stubborn and stick to Microsoft software, at the very least start using some good bibliography manager, such as EndNote or Zotero. The latter is free and can export to EndNote or Bibtex formats – it also integrates well with Word. Furthermore, for Word users, take some class in “managing large documents” before embarking on your dissertation writing.
The latter two require an editor to maintain your files. I’m a big fan of Emacs, including versions for Windows and the Mac. Probably mostly for masochistic reasons, I am also starting to use vi and ed. It appears that for Windows, Tinn-R is a very nice editor for R code and LaTeX files, but I do not have experience with this program.
Pic is a very nice little programming language to create diagrams and integrates very nicely with LaTeX.
statistics
Wolfram’s MathWorld is an excellent source for the technical details of everything related to math, including statistics.
The ISI Glossary of Statistics provides an extensive list of statistical terms and their translations in many different languages.
data
Political, Social, and Economic Data Sets
Paul Hensel’s International Relations Data Site
Guide to Political Science Data
Political Science Data
Replication data of the International Studies Quarterly
IQSS Dataverse Network
World Bank Data
OECD Statistics Portal
Eurostat
Central Statistics Office Ireland
International Social Survey Programme
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research data archive, accessible through UCD’s Irish Social Science Data Archive
Journal of Applied Econometrics data files
Example data:
Sample data from Marno Verbeek, A guide to modern econometrics
presentations
My PhD Research Design classes of Fall 2008 and 2009 helped me assemble a set of links that help preparing presentations. My own major advice: “Keep It Simple, Stupid!” Slides should be as simple as possible – the best ones are those where there is nothing to remove. They should not be summaries of your presentation – they are only visual guides through it. See these quotes (nothing to do with slides per se) on the KISS principle. A nice website on presentations that adheres to the same ideology is presentation zen. Furthermore, few things are so lame as presentations that go way over time (so keep a clock and adjust your presentation “on the fly” when needed) or people that answer questions from the audience so extensively that all time is taken up by them talking and they get very limited feedback on their work.
Now, links from the class:
2009:
presentation skills
how to present a paper: a speaker’s guide (PDF)
how to present your research well
mastering your PhD: presentation skills and group meetings
presentation magazine
presentation skills training
famous example of presenting statistics by Hans Rosling (video)
example PhD presentation slides (PPT)
PowerPoint slides world
upload and share PowerPoint slides
tips for using PowerPoint for academics
PowerPoint presentations for scientists (PPT)
how-to documents from Microsoft
making PowerPoint slides (PPT)
createing an effective PowerPoint presentation (DOC)
2008:
SlideShare Blog: huge blog on presentations, including many examples;
slide tips on the above blog;
Eastern Connecticuts State University’s library page on presentations provides a comprehensive overview of preparation and presentation styles;
Killer presentations (PDF) provides a tipsheet on format, fonts, colors, etc.;
Tutoriel powerpoint (French) is made for teachers, with advice for both PowerPoint and the open-source Impress;
here (PDF, French) is a tutorial for the use of Impress (more in general, Framasoft (French) provides all kinds of free software);
and here is the equivalent for PowerPoint;
presentation tips on how to make slides;
or Microsoft on presentations;
yet another tutorial on slides;
or on Powerpoint.
You might also actually want to have a book on this stuff:
Babara Chivers and Michael Shoolbred, 2007, A student’s guide to presentations, Sage Publications.
Dale Carnegie, 1962, The quick and easy way to effective speaking, Vermillion Press.
summer schools
Interesting summer schools to consider (again, based on suggestions by students from the PhD Research Design module I teach):
ESF Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences summer schools on survival analysis, network analysis, and projection methods
ECPR Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis
Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research
Oslo Summer School
Oxford’s Spring School (ECPR possibly reimburses costs)
INCORE International Summer School in conflict resolution training
PRIO Summer School in peace research
European Summer School in Policy Analysis
International Political Marketing Conference, Manchester Business School
Lobbying in the EU: How to represent and defend your interests in Brussels
funding
Similar to the above, in my PhD Research Design class of Fall 2008 I asked students to provide suggestions for places where they could go to find funding for conferences, summer schools, etc. Here are some interesting links:
UCD’s Seed Funding scheme
ECPR, which reimburses costs for up to 4 participants in the Joint Sessions or the two-yearly general conferences
WIT’s Research Support page (links to several funding sources)
Council for European Studies occassionally has funding available
O’Reilly Foundation
Fulbright
Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Global Irish Institute
Fondation de France (humanitarian projects)
Agence Nationale de la Recherche (French national research foundation)
Society of Basque Studies
Egide Association (French non-profit organisation that provides mobility grants)
French Ministry of Foreign Affairs
French Embassy in Ireland
Europe’s Tempus Program
help, tips & tricks
Latex / Bibtex
Tips and tricks for LaTeX and friends, including on graphics programs and languages that are useful within Latex.
(Statistical) programming
Coding style and good computing, by Jonathan Nagler.