PAI 721: Introduction to Statistics

Course Syllabus

Author

Prof. Jack Reilly

Published

Fall 2026

🏛️ Course Information

Class

Location: School of Management 013

Time: Tuesday and Thursday, 2:00 PM - 3:20 PM

Instructor

Professor Jack Reilly

Office: Eggers 225

Office Hours: Friday, 11 AM - Noon and 3-4 PM

Appointments: schedule online

Phone: 315-443-2687 (office)

e-mail:

Teaching Assistant

Soojin Yim

Office: Eggers 400A

Office Hours: Wednesday, 2-4 PM

e-mail:

Description

Public policy and administration decisions are often difficult and risky because decisions must be made with incomplete and imperfect information. The primary purpose of this course is to introduce the basics of modeling and analyzing problems that involve decision-making under uncertainty. A high priority will be placed on learning how to choose the appropriate statistics to examine a particular problem, and how to avoid being misled by statistics presented by others that do not appropriately reflect available information.

Objectives

Students will learn how to use quantitative data and statistical tools to understand problems, how to become smart consumers of statistical reports and quantitative information, and how to communicate statistical findings to a variety of audiences.

Prerequisites

A thorough understanding of high school algebra and geometry.

📘 Materials

Books

Required: You will need a core statistics textbook for the class, and there are a few options:

NoteTextbook Editions

Any reasonably recent edition of the textbooks is sufficient; you do not have to buy the most recent version. (Statistics doesn’t change that much!)

You may find one of these books suits you better than the other. (I recommend trying all of them!) Each text has a slightly different focus. Favero is more focused on a math-light presentation, preferring conceptual explanations, but is light in detail (especially in probability). Moore et al. is a more traditional statistics book (although still applied). Meier et al. is very clearly targeted at Public Administration, but the content itself jumps around a bit relative to the order of our presentation of material. If you have strong opinions about any book at the end of the semester, let me know!

Recommended: A resource to assist you with Stata usage and coding.

  • Traditional: Acock, Alan. Stata: A Gentle Introduction. Stata Press. Any edition 4th or newer is sufficient.
  • Web Resources: UCLA Statistical Methods and Data Analytics Stata Learning Modules: https://stats.oarc.ucla.edu/stata/modules/

Software

Stata (any version 13 or greater; the most basic is fine). You can also purchase a student license, which is available for 6- or 12-month intervals, or perpetually. See the Stata website for pricing: https://www.stata.com/order/new/edu/profplus/student-pricing/. If you will be taking PAI 722 after 721, you may want to consider a 12-month license ($94). Otherwise, a 6-month subscription is also available ($48). For those of you who do not wish to purchase your own version, copies are located on the computers in the student clusters in the basement of Eggers. You can also access Stata via Syracuse’s remote desktop: http://rds.syr.edu. Information on how to log in to the remote desktop is available here.

Hardware

You may bring your own simple calculator (not graphing). If you do not have one, the department will provide one.

You will need to use a computer to complete assignments in this class. If you do not have one of your own, you may use one on campus. The student clusters in the basement of Eggers are likely the most convenient.

Online Class Resources

This website hosts the official course syllabus as well as course assignments, problems, and readings. In addition, Blackboard is Syracuse University’s course platform. In it, you will find occasional course announcements, a submission portal for your assignments, and additional materials. In addition, during the semester, solutions to the problem sets and lecture slides will be posted.

Please note, however, that this is primarily an in-person, not online, class, and as such, class is the primary source of course-related announcements and material.

📌 Course Requirements

Overview

Satisfactory completion of the course requires completion of the following:

  1. Regular course participation and attendance (10%)
  2. Weekly Assignments (20%)
  3. Practicum 1 (15%)
  4. Midterm (20%)
  5. Practicum 2 (15%)
  6. Final (20%)

Attendance

One of the guiding principles of my class is that you are adults, and thus, capable of managing your own time. I have little interest in policing your lives. Attendance is kept for each day of class, but you will lose no points on attendance if you miss a couple days: everyone has things that occasionally come up in life that need to be dealt with, and I fully realize that some of those things are things you — very understandably — may not want to discuss with your professor. That’s OK!

That said, attendance in class is an important element to doing well in the course. If you miss more than a couple days, it’s advisable to check in. (That way, I also won’t mark your attendance grade off for chronic absenteeism.) The easiest way to do this is to email me when something comes up and you have to miss class (which will also allow me to tell you if you’re missing anything particularly important).

If you must miss class, the way to make up what you’ve missed is straightforward: make sure to look over the posted slides, do the reading for the day, get notes from a friend, and still complete the assignment if you are able (or, if it is a day we are going over the assignment, make sure to look over the assignment solutions). If you do these things and still feel like you’re missing something, please feel free to come into my office hours and we can talk it through.

NoteParticipation

There is no formal grade for “participation”. However, I reserve the right to dock a couple points here if you do ridiculous/unprofessional things in class (like answering your cell phone, always coming in late and regularly distracting others, spontaneously breaking out into ribald song in the middle of class, etc).

Weekly Assignments

There is an assignment each week for class, due Friday at midnight.1 Assignments will vary in nature: some will be one-off problem sets, some may build on problem sets from a prior week. All material needed for an assignment will be covered by the Tuesday before the assignment is due, and the assignment itself will be posted no later than Tuesday of the week in question. There is no penalty for turning in an assignment up until the Tuesday of the following week. However, no assignment work is accepted after class Tuesday of the following week, as we will go over answers for assignments together in class. There will typically be no assignments on weeks when other significant work (practica, tests) are due, and students may miss up to two assignments without penalty. Students may also work together on assignments, although each student is ultimately responsible for their own work.

NoteAssignment Evaluation

Assignments are evaluated based upon effort and a check completion system. Students who answer every problem will earn a check, with each check worth one point toward their final assignment grade.

WarningComputing

Most homework assignments will be done on a computer using Stata. Do not simply hand in output from Stata. Instead, paste the relevant results into a word processor adding text to explain these results. You must also hand in reproducible script (.do) files with your analysis. (Don’t worry, we’ll cover what this means.)

Practica

The practica are, essentially, large assignments that are worth more and graded on a scale.2 They are untimed, take-home, cumulative, and will be completed on your own time (and computer). Unlike the weekly assignments, you are also not allowed to work together on them. Their timing corresponds (roughly) with the midterm and final; you may wish to think of them as the “take-home” midterm and “take-home” final, if you prefer.

Midterm and Final

The midterm and final are traditional timed exams given in class with pen and paper. No computer will be available to you. You may bring your own simple calculator (not graphing). If you do not have one, the department will provide one. Both exams are cumulative across the course.

🎓 Expectations

Etiquette & Decorum

This is a graduate course: I take it for granted that you have a basic interest in the material, an enthusiastic attitude toward participation, and a respectful attitude to everyone in the room. A university classroom is fundamentally a learning community: be courteous to fellow students and the professor, don’t let yourself be distracted by your cell phone in class, and don’t let what is on your computer screen distract fellow students in the class, either.

Office & Consultation Hours, Appointments

I encourage you to chat with me at any point if you have questions about the course. You can schedule a meeting with me by going to my website here: http://jacklreilly.github.io/ and sign up for time at your convenience. You can also always just drop in during my regularly scheduled drop-in office hours without an appointment, or stop by to see if my door is open: if it’s open, come on in. (Don’t feel like you’re intruding! I’ll tell you if it’s not a good time.)

E-mail

Email is the best way to contact me. I’m usually pretty responsive, but as a baseline, I always aim to get back to you by the end of the business day the day after you email. So if you email me at 2 PM Tuesday, I’ll get back to you by 6 PM Wednesday; if 10 PM Thursday, by 6 PM Friday; if you email me at 3 PM on Friday, by 6 PM Monday, etc.3

Note

If your email requires a long response, expect me to encourage you to schedule an appointment with me so that we can more effectively discuss your questions.

📊 Assessment

Course grades are determined according to the breakdown listed under “Course Requirements” above.

Grading Scale

Grade Grade Point/Credit Class Points
A 4.000 94 – 100
A- 3.667 90 – 93.99
B+ 3.333 87 – 89.99
B 3.000 83 – 86.99
B- 2.667 80 – 82.99
C+ 2.333 77 – 79.99
C 2.000 73 – 76.99
C- 1.667 70 – 72.99
F 0 69.99 or less

🙏 Acknowledgments

This course, and syllabus, draws heavily on material developed alongside, with, and by others in the PAI 721 teaching rotation, including but not limited to Jun Li, Tomas Olivier, and Ying Shi. I am grateful for their support and permission to use their materials.

📚 Course Outline & Readings

Unit Topic STA PNA MtM 1e MtM 2e
I Descriptive statistics 1.2; 1.3; 1.4 1, 4, 5, 6 1, 2 1, 2
II Statistical relationships 2.1–2.7 14, 15 3 3, 4
III Producing data 3.1–3.4 2, 3 4 9, 10
IV Probability 4.1–4.5 7, 8 5 7
Midterm Exam
V Sampling distributions 5.1–5.3 7, 8 6 8
VI Inference 6.1–6.4 10 7 5
VII Hypothesis Testing 7.1–7.2 11 8, 9 6
VIII Simple linear regression 10.1 17 10 11.1
IX* Less simple regression 11.1–11.2 20 11, 12 11.2
Final Exam

* If time allows.

TipBook Abbreviations

You can use any book you wish (although I encourage you to make sure its style suits you):

🗓️ Class Schedule

We do not have a formal daily schedule for topics - we move through them in the order prescribed above, and they take as much time as they take to get through. That said, there are a few dates you should be aware of:

  • August 25: First Day of Class
  • September 24: No Class (Reilly Away)
  • October 8: Midterm Review Session (Time TBA)
  • October 13: No Class (Fall Break)
  • October 15: Midterm Exam (In Class)
  • October 23: Practicum 1 Due
  • November 24 & 26: No Class (Thanksgiving Break)
  • December 8: Last Day of Class
  • December 11: Practicum 2 Due
  • TBD: Final Exam (Pending Central Schedule)
NoteSubscribe to the Class Calendar

You can subscribe to the class schedule in your calendar software of your choice:

📡 Subscribe 💾 Download .ics

Class sessions appear on Tuesdays and Thursdays during class time; assignment deadlines appear as all-day events on the day they are due.

📖 A Word on Reading

Reading in a statistics course is different from a substantive course. You should generally keep up with readings, but you are not expected to thoroughly digest them by the day we cover them in class. The textbooks serve as an additional resource to lectures and help you understand the material more effectively. They may also cover details we don’t emphasize in class (and vice versa).

Each book has its strengths:

  • STA Introduction to the Practice of Statistics: traditional, more math-heavy, detailed.
  • PNA Applied Statistics for Public and Nonprofit Administration: focused on applied public administration, still detailed. Sequenced differently.
  • MtM Minus the Math: conceptual, common-language, intuition-focused, but light on probability and detail.

You may use any as your primary reference. If you need more depth, consult STA or PNA. If you want lighter or more intuitive explanations, lean on MtM. STA is the “default” text for the class - the one the syllabus was built around. PNA has lots of good examples from public administration, but the content sequencing is more intuitive in STA, so we follow that order.

We will cover the above material in sequence, with particular readings recommended for each day announced in class (and in slides) ahead of time where appropriate. In general, if you need to prioritize, make sure to focus on your weekly assignment first, and readings second.

🏫 Campus Academic Resources & Policies

The following reflects the approved campus-wide academic policies of Syracuse University. For more information and detail, please consult the full documentation of University policies here.

📖 Academic Integrity

As a preeminent and inclusive student-focused research institution, Syracuse University places academic integrity at the forefront of learning and considers it a core value and guiding pillar of education. The University’s Academic Integrity Policy provides guidelines for completing academic work with integrity. Students are required to meet both course-specific and University-wide academic integrity expectations, such as crediting your sources, doing your own work, communicating honestly and supporting academic integrity.

Upholding academic integrity includes the protection of faculty intellectual property. Students should not upload, distribute or share an instructor’s course materials, including presentations, assignments, exams or other evaluative materials, without permission. Using websites that charge fees or require uploading of course material (e.g., Chegg, Course Hero) to obtain exam solutions or assignments completed by others and presenting them as your own violates academic integrity expectations in this course and may be classified as a Level 3 violation.

All academic integrity expectations that apply to in-person assignments, quizzes and exams also apply online. Students found in violation of the policy are subject to grade sanctions determined by the course instructor and non-grade sanctions determined by the school or college offering the course. Students may not drop or withdraw from courses in which they face a suspected violation. Any established violation in this course may result in course failure regardless of violation level.

🤖 Artificial Intelligence

Based on the specific learning outcomes and assignments in this course, artificial intelligence is permitted on the following: course assignments and practica. Artificial intelligence is not permitted on in-class exams. See each assignment, quiz, or exam instructions for more information about what artificial intelligence tools are permitted and to what extent, as well as citation requirements. If no instructions are provided for a specific assignment, then no use of any artificial intelligence tool is permitted. Any AI use beyond that which is detailed in course assignments is explicitly prohibited except when documented permission is granted.

Please also see Syracuse University’s general campus AI policies here.

I, as the instructor, may use generative AI tools to help develop course materials. When I do, I take full responsibility for reviewing and verifying all AI-generated content to ensure it is accurate, appropriate and aligned with our learning objectives. All final course materials represent my professional judgment about what will best support your learning.

👤 Attendance Policy

Attendance in classes is expected in all courses at Syracuse University. It is a federal requirement that faculty promptly notify the university of students who do not attend or cease to attend any class. Faculty will use Early-Semester Progress Reports and Mid-Semester Progress Reports in Orange SUccess to alert the Registrar and Financial Aid Office on non-attendance. For more information visit:

Faculty: Information for Faculty: Non-attendance or Stopped Attending
Students: Information for Students: Non-attendance or Stopped Attending

If a student is unable to participate in-person or virtually for an extended period of time (48 hours or more), the student may request an absence notification from their home school/college Dean’s Office or through Student Outreach and Support office. Instructors will be notified via the “Absence Notification” flag in Orange SUccess.

Barnes Center at the Arch (Health, Counseling, etc.) staff will not provide medical excuse notes for students. When Barnes Center staff determine it is medically necessary to remove a student from classes, they will coordinate with Student Outreach and Support case management staff to provide appropriate notification to faculty through Orange Success. For absences lasting less than 48 hours, students are encouraged to discuss academic arrangements directly with their faculty.

Additional information may be found at Student Outreach and Support: Absence Notifications.

🖼 Blackboard

This class will use the Blackboard Learning Management to house the syllabus, course content, links to external course materials, assignments, quizzes, exams, feedback, and grades. Due dates and times in Blackboard are stored in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and displayed for each user based on the time zone setting of their computer and data from their internet browser. The system will always display the time zone being used. If an instructor sets a due date of 11pm Eastern time, a student in the Pacific time zone will see a due date of 8pm.

Information about Blackboard is available on Answers Blackboard; alternatively, you can contact Information Technology Services by sending an email to , calling 315.443.2677, or in-person at the ITS Service Center, located at 1-227 CST in the Life Sciences Complex. Business hours for the Service Center can be found on the ITS website.

🚫 Discrimination and Harassment

Syracuse University does not discriminate and prohibits harassment or discrimination related to any protected category including creed, ethnicity, citizenship status, reproductive health decisions, national origin, sex, gender, pregnancy, disability, marital status, age, race, color, veteran status, military status, religion, sexual orientation, domestic violence status, genetic information, gender identity and/or gender expression, shared common ancestry, or any other status protected by applicable law.

Any complaint of discrimination or harassment related to any of these protected bases should be reported to Sheila Johnson-Willis, associate vice president and chief equal opportunity and Title IX officer in the Office of Equal Opportunity, Inclusion and Resolution Services (621 Skytop Road, Suite 1001, Syracuse, NY 13244; equalopp@syr.edu; 315.443.4018). She is responsible for coordinating compliance efforts under various laws including Titles VI, VII, IX and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.

🌍 Diversity

It is the intent of this course for students from all diverse backgrounds and perspectives to be well served by this course, that students’ learning needs be addressed both in and out of class, and that the diversity that students bring to this class be viewed as a resource, strength, and benefit. It is also critical to present materials and activities that are respectful of diversity: gender, sexuality, disability, age, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, race, and culture. Your suggestions are encouraged and appreciated. Please let your instructor know ways to improve the effectiveness of the course for you personally or for other students or student groups.

🤝 Disability

Syracuse University values diversity and inclusion and is committed to a climate of mutual respect and full participation. There may be aspects of the instruction or design of this course that result in barriers to your inclusion and full participation. I invite students to meet with me to discuss strategies and/or accommodations (academic adjustments) that may be essential to your success in collaboration with the Center for Disability Resources (CDR).

To discuss disability-accommodations or register with CDR, visit disabilityresources.syr.edu, or contact the center at 315.443.4498 or disabilityresources@syr.edu for more detailed information. CDR is responsible for coordinating disability-related academic accommodations and will work with you to develop an access plan. Since accommodations may require early planning and generally are not provided retroactively, please contact CDR as soon as possible.

🌐 Faith and Religious Accommodations

Syracuse University’s Religious Observances Policy recognizes the diversity of faiths represented in the campus community and protects the rights of students, faculty and staff to observe religious holy days according to their traditions. Under the policy, students are given an opportunity to make up any examination, study or work requirements that may be missed due to a religious observance, provided they notify their instructors no later than the academic drop deadline. For any observances occurring before the academic drop deadline, students must notify faculty at least two academic days in advance. Students register their observances using MySlice.

📝 FERPA

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) sets forth requirements regarding the privacy of student records. FERPA governs both the access to and release of those records, known as education records, and the information they contain. Under FERPA, faculty have a legal responsibility to protect the confidentiality of student records. For additional information about FERPA and Syracuse University’s FERPA policy, see Compliance with the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act or contact the Office of the Registrar (315.443.2422).

🩺 Health and Wellness

Well-being and mental health are significant predictors of academic success. It is critical to take care of yourself physically and emotionally and to effectively navigate stress, anxiety, and depression. Please familiarize yourself with the range of resources the Barnes Center provides https://ese.syr.edu/bewell/ and seek out support for mental health concerns as needed. Counseling services are available 24/7, 365 days, at 315-443-8000.

🍊 ORANGE Alert

ORANGE ALERT, Syracuse University’s crisis notification system, uses text messages, phone, and email alerts to provide rapid notification and instructions to members of the University community in the event of a crisis in progress. In the event of an emergency, please use one of the following numbers to reach us:

From any phone: 315.443.2224 From your cell phone: #78 (#SU) Campus landline: 711

For more information on ORANGE ALERT, including how to update your contact information, visit the DPS website.

Footnotes

  1. Although, I should note, I very much hope you aren’t working on my assignments on Friday at 11 PM! I suggest you work on assignments starting on Tuesday of the week in question and finish them early enough so your Friday afternoon and evening isn’t overcome with them.↩︎

  2. While regular weekly assignments are check/no-check credit, on practica, you’ll receive a certain number of points out of the total.↩︎

  3. Again: usually I’m much faster! But if you don’t hear from me by this baseline, feel free to bump a reminder.↩︎