Practicum 1

Data Wrangling and Visualization

Author

Prof. Jack Reilly

Published

Fall 2026

The Task

Replicate Figures 1 and 2 from Bartels (2000), β€œPartisanship and Voting Behavior”, for the years 2006–2024 using the Cumulative CCES Dataset.

The Details

  • This Practicum is due Friday, October 16, by midnight.

    • You may turn the practicum in late, for a one point penalty, up until the beginning of class on October 20th. We will go over the assignment in class on the 20th, so no work may be turned in after that point.

  • Create a GitHub repo containing your exam and submit a link to it on Blackboard. The repo will need to contain at least two things: an R script file (.R or .qmd) and a write-up Quarto document typeset as a .pdf. You may wish to have more than one R script file.

  • The practicum IS open-book, open-note, and open-internet, but it IS NOT open-human. In short: you can use any resource you want, so long as that resource does not involve asking another human a question. (The only exception is that you can ask the professor clarification questions.)

  • If you use AI, you must also turn in a record of your prompts as a plain-text .txt file. You MAY use AI, but only to ask questions as you design your own work. You MAY NOT feed the practicum itself into a chatbot or other AI tool.

  • Make sure your write-up document and code script files are cleanly formatted. You will be evaluated both for the accuracy of your output and the clarity of your code.

  • Follow all the data and style guidelines we have discussed in class. Your .R files β€” once I change the working directory β€” should properly execute all commands needed to reproduce the results of your practicum, and should do so without any errors. If your .R file does not do this, the relevant answers will be considered wrong.

  • You may find the cumulative CCES/CES files in the course drive.

  • In your write-up, make note of any particular challenges you encountered, as well as any significant differences from what you found when replicating Bartels with the ANES.

Good luck!