Why I Wrote this Workbook
When I was a first-generation student at community college, I never heard of Stata or any other statistical and data analysis software. I had a challenging enough time in my computer programming, statistics, and calculus courses during my first two years, that having a professor try to teach me about such data analysis software would likely have gone in one ear and out the other ear.
Once I transferred to UC Merced, I was introduced to Stata in my econometrics (think economics and statistics) course. I earned a D+ in that course because I was confused by the underlying mechanics of the best, linear, unbiased estimator (good old “BLUE”) and having to use Stata. Also, I spent time organizing California Students for Barack Obama during spring 2007, so my attendance in econometrics was not consistent.
I ended up successfully retaking econometrics at Sacramento State after my employer, Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi, told me that I needed to finish my bachelor’s degree. I did not mention this in the prior paragraph, but that D+ needed to be a C- so the course would count towards my graduation requirements. While it cost me about $500 to retake the course, I was able to leave work early on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I could drive from downtown to the university campus.
Once I started working in the U.S. House of Representatives, I encountered more reports with data analysis. A practical link was established after I met with representatives of the RAND Corporation to learn more about reports they published. That is when I realized the utility of my econometrics training and it’s real-world application to public policy.
I left my real-world career as a congressional policy advisor and returned to UC Merced to start the political science Ph.D. program. I was confronted with data analysis again, and I struggled so much that I had to retake the whole core methods sequence during my second year in the program; this was not a small setback, as it consisted of 3 courses.
I powered through and successfully completed the quantitative analysis-rich program. I resolved that when I became a professor, I would work to introduce my mostly first-generation community college students to statistical and data analysis software. And so, Polimetrics is a result of that resolve.
Josh Franco, Ph.D.
April 2021