The course aims to analyze dynamic, multivariate interactions in evolutionary and non-stationary processes. The course first considers stationary univariate time-series processes and then extend the analysis to non-stationary processes and multivariate processes. The course covers a review of linear dynamic time-series models and focus on the concept of cointegration, as many applications lend themselves to dynamic systems of equilibrium-correction relations. In the final analysis, the course is aimed at presenting a certain number of econometric techniques the mastery of which is becoming increasingly inevitable in professional circles.
MIA and MPA Policy Skills II Core. Pre-req: Quant I. Priority Registration: MIA and MPA.
We will examine the evolution and revolution in data-driven politics as practiced by leading campaigns and advocacy efforts. The course will provide an overview of key issues in public opinion polling, large-scale microtargeting, randomized controlled trial testing, the application of behavioral science and modern statistical techniques, as well as the current and emerging uses of large language models. Our primary focus will be on developments in U.S. political and advocacy campaigns, but we will also examine the international applications of these tools. The course is designed to provide an informative yet critical overview of an area where it is often difficult to separate hype from expertise. The purpose of the course is to prepare students to understand the strengths and limitations of evidence-based approaches, analytics, and current applications of artificial intelligence. The course provides concrete and practical knowledge of some of the key tools in use in campaigns and advocacy. Students will be encouraged throughout the course to view developments in political analytics as an example of how emerging techniques can be applied and misapplied in a range of organizations and efforts. Students will have opportunities to work on specific advocacy or organizational issues of their own interest, developing approaches to the use of new data and analytics tools that may be of use as they consider specific careers in a range of fields. Students will have the opportunity to design, field, and analyze their own polling questions.
Students will be required to make extensive use of current AI tools, even as those tools change during the course. The course will encourage the use of these tools to support rigorous statistical reasoning while requiring students to understand the appropriate use of methods that are now at least superficially easier to apply. It is strongly recommended that students have completed Quantitative Analysis before taking this course. The class will include outside speakers with expertise in polling, analytics, the use of AI in politics, and other areas.
Mark Steitz is a Washington, DC based communications and analytics strategist. He founded TSD Communications and co founded Catalist (large scale voter data), The Analyst Institute (evidence based voter contact), and QRS New Media (communications technology). He served on the Advisory Board of th
May be repeated for credit. A special investigation of a problem in nuclear engineering, medical physics, applied mathematics, applied physics, and/or plasma physics consisting of independent work on the part of the student and embodied in a formal report.
This course aims to provide students with further instruction on how (1) to motivate detailed empirical analysis on a research question of their choice, (2) to justify and to design appropriate econometric tests using relevant time-series, cross-sectional, or panel data, etc., and (3) to draw accurate inferences—as well as direct policy implications—from their results for a wide audience. To meet this objective, the key course requirement is to write an empirical policy paper that details (1)–(3) in no more than 5000 words total (including exhibits, references, etc.), geared not for academics but for economic policymakers or other practitioners. Also, students will be required to report their findings to their instructor, advisors, and fellow students during 10- to 15-minute slide presentations toward the end of the semester.
MIA and MPA Policy Skills II Core. Priority Registration: MIA and MPA.
Alternate title: "How to Use a Bit of Code to Do Things That Would Be Really Hard in Spreadsheets." Students will learn data analysis through the Python programming language—exploring, manipulating, visualizing, and interpreting open data to answer policy questions. The class incorporates use of generative AI for coding problems, helping students understand its strengths and weaknesses. No coding experience required.
The Writing Program has in place several programs that involve more than 70 students a term going beyond the Columbia gates to teach writing in community groups and schools. These programs include Columbia Artist/Teachers (CA/T), Our Word, The Incarcerated Artists Project (IAP), The Incarcerated Writers Initiative (IWI), as well as public programs on and off campus (including Lenfest) that are produced collaboratively.
The diverse array of partner organizations (see attached)—curated to provide a multiplicity of teaching experiences as well as service to the community—require various modalities of pedagogy and administration. About 14 students (see attached) are in leadership positions, with dual responsibilities of working with the partner programs in structuring and troubleshooting programs while also supervising the MFA participants and providing pedagogical guidance. In effect, these leaders are acting as arts administrators, an experience that may be useful for them in pursuing post-MFA employment.
The Writing Program’s Director of Community Outreach oversees these programs and student leaders on an ad hoc basis. The purpose of this no-credit, no-tuition course is to formalize faculty supervision and support for the Writing Program’s outreach component.
The shape of this course will be mutable, tailored to the ongoing needs of the students, their partner organizations, and the Writing Program. Contact hours will comprise in-person meetings as well as emails and phone calls, focusing on: setting up and running programs and events, working collaboratively, implementing pedagogy, and troubleshooting.
Student leaders will meet as a group with the instructor three times a term.
Individuals leaders will meet with the instructor an additional minimum of twice a term.
The CA/T Director and the instructor will meet about eight times a term.
MIA and MPA Policy Skills II Core. Priority Registration: MIA and MPA.
This course provides a practical introduction to the core concepts, techniques, and tools used to analyze data for effective decision-making. Designed for students with little to no background in statistics, mathematics, or statistical software, the course emphasizes intuitive understanding and hands-on learning. Through interactive exercises and real-world datasets, students will explore both qualitative and quantitative methods for extracting insights, identifying patterns, and building evidence-based recommendations. The course focuses on developing analytical reasoning and applied skills that can be used across a range of policy and professional contexts.
MIA and MPA Policy Skills II Core. Priority Registration: MIA and MPA.
This advanced course provides a comprehensive introduction to the principles and practices of effective database design, management, and security. Students will gain a strong foundation in information organization, data storage, and database administration, with attention to key topics such as data warehousing, governance, security, privacy, and alternative database models.
The course emphasizes the relational database model and includes practical instruction in Structured Query Language (SQL), data modeling, and integrity constraints. Students will learn to design, build, and manage databases while addressing contemporary issues in security and privacy. Prior experience with basic programming and data structures is recommended.
How are bodies in the world? How is the world in bodies? Building from these deceptively simple questions, ours will be an interdisciplinary reading seminar on how bodies (mostly human, but sometimes nonhuman) are made and remade in and through their environments and via their relationships to the material world. Privileging porosity as a rubric, we consider the ever-permeable boundaries between bodies and the other beings (be they viral, chemical, microbial or otherwise) with which they become entangled. Alongside the monographs under study, we will tackle article-length engagements with theories of new feminist/queer materialisms, decolonial and critical science studies. Further, a key aim of this course is to provide students the opportunity to hone some of the most important skills we have in our toolbox as academics, relative to our teaching, our public voice/s as critics, and to our own research.
MIA and MPA Policy Skills II Core. Pre-req: Quant I (SIPA IA6500). Priority Registration: MIA and MPA.
Research is an important part of the policy process: it can inform the development of programs and policies so they are responsive to community needs, reveal the impacts of these programs and policies, and help us better understand populations or social phenomena. This half-semester course serves as an introduction to how to ethically collect data for smaller research projects, with an in-depth look at focus groups and surveys as data collection tools. We will also learn about issues related to measurement and sampling. Students will create their own focus group protocol and short survey instrument designed to answer a research question of interest to them.
This seminar offers an in-depth, interdisciplinary examination of North Korea’s political system, society, foreign policy, and security strategy. Students will critically assess how outside powers influenced Korea’s division, the internal dynamics that shaped the Kim regime’s rise, and how state institutions continue to evolve. Drawing from political science, history, firsthand accounts, and policy documents, the course equips students to challenge common misperceptions and engage analytically with key questions surrounding North Korea’s economy, propaganda, human rights, gender dynamics, and nuclear posture.
MIA and MPA Policy Skills II Core. Priority Registration: MIA and MPA.
This 7-week mini-course leads the students into the R world, helps them master the basics, and establishes a platform for future self-study. The course offers students basic programming knowledge and effective data analysis skills in R in the context of public policy-making and policy evaluation. Students will learn how to install R and RStudio, understand and use R data objects, and become familiar with base R and several statistical and graphing packages. The course will also emphasize use cases for R in public policy domains, focusing on cleaning, exploring, and analyzing data.
Local and global fields, group cohomology, local class field theory, global class field theory and applications.
MIA and MPA Policy Skills II Core. Priority Registration: MIA and MPA.
This course introduces students to the principles and practices of data visualization as a powerful tool for interpreting and communicating complex information. As large datasets become increasingly available across sectors, the ability to transform raw data into clear, compelling visuals is essential for insight and decision-making.
Students will learn to select appropriate visualization types, apply design techniques that balance form and function, and tell analytic stories with clarity and impact. Through hands-on assignments and guided case studies, the course builds practical skills in visualizing data to uncover patterns, reveal trends, and engage diverse audiences.
MIA and MPA Policy Skills II Core. Pre-req: Computing in Context (DSPC IA6000). Priority Registration: MIA and MPA.
This course introduces students to the fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence (AI), its applications in public policy, and its implications for the future of governance. Students will gain a foundational understanding of AI, including the mathematical and programming principles behind common machine learning algorithms used for prediction, classification, and clustering. The course explores the practical applications of AI across various sectors, including business, non-profits, and government, highlighting its transformative potential. In the final segment, students will apply their knowledge to design AI solutions for public policy challenges. Through a "Concept to Implementation" process, student groups will identify problems, navigate data and algorithmic considerations, and propose actionable AI-driven solutions.
TBD
MIA and MPA Policy Skills II Core. Priority Registration: MIA and MPA.
In the past two years, Large Language Models (LLMs) built using transformer frameworks have emerged as the fastest-growing area of research and investment in AI/machine learning. Recent releases of chatbots such as ChatGPT (OpenAI), Bing (Microsoft), and Bard (Google) quickly reached hundreds of millions of users and have become the face of artificial intelligence for consumers. There has also been an explosion in the number of applications that depend on LLMs for a variety of more specialized tasks. Recent models have shown impressive performance on both canonical machine learning tasks and for everyday use, yet are in many ways poorly understood and, in some cases, exhibit unexpected and potentially harmful behavior.
Policymakers, analysts, and non-profit and industry leaders need an understanding of these models to take advantage of the opportunities they present and to mitigate potential harms. This course provides an overview of Large Language Models and gives students hands-on experience with various ways of interacting with LLMs. Students will learn to interpret model evaluation metrics, and we will discuss safety and ethics in applied contexts.
MIA and MPA Policy Skills II Core. Pre-req: Quant I (SIPA IA6500)
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Priority Registration: MIA and MPA.
Data is not neutral. How it is collected, categorized, and analyzed is shaped by historical, political, economic, and social forces, often reinforcing existing injustices. While policy professionals are trained in quantitative methods, there is comparatively less focus on interrogating how data itself is produced, how existing frameworks exclude certain populations, and how data can be used to either reinforce or challenge inequities.
This course introduces students to inclusive and decolonial approaches to working with data for policy research and advocacy, emphasizing critical engagement with its lifecycle—from collection to analysis to dissemination. Students will examine how statistical tools, methods, and available data can be utilized to either reinforce or dismantle barriers to opportunity and address structural injustices. Through weekly discussions, hands-on coding exercises, and a research or advocacy project sketch, students will examine a range of data sources and methodologies while developing strategies for ethical, community-centered data practices.
Selected advanced topics in data-driven analysis and computation. Content varies from year to year, and different topics rotate through the course numbers 6690 to 6699.
Selected advanced topics in data-driven analysis and computation. Content varies from year to year, and different topics rotate through the course numbers 6690 to 6699.
Prerequisites: One year each of Chemistry, Physics, Calculus and Earth Sciences Overview This course explores the origin of magmas and their subsequent movements; their ascent, stalling and eruption; their transport of heat and mass through the earth; their formation of crust and creation of volcanoes. The course will explore magmatism itself - its chemical and physical underpinnings - and also develop magmatic tools used to understand other earth processes. Topics will be focused around Grand Questions. Example questions include: What do magmas tell us about the thermal structure of the earth? Why do magmas store and stall where they do? What drives the largest eruptions on Earth? Does continental extension drive melting or melting drive extension? Questions will evolve to reflect the state of the field and student interest. The course is designed to serve as an accessible breadth course for Earth Science graduate students in any discipline.
Applications of spoken language processing, including text-to-speech and dialogue systems. Analysis of speech and text, including entrainment, empathy, personality, emotion, humor, sarcasm, deception, trust, radicalization, and charisma.
This course examines the rise and demise of the Chinese Revolution from the unique angles provided by avant-garde writers, artists, designers, graphic novelists, filmmakers, playwrights, and theatre directors in modern China.
Continuation of IEOR E6711, covering further topics in stochastic modeling in the context of queueing, reliability, manufacturing, insurance risk, financial engineering, and other engineering applications. Topics from among generalized semi-Markov processes; processes with a non-discrete state space; point processes; stochastic comparisons; martingales; introduction to stochastic calculus.
Most simply defined, a "mural" is an artwork made directly on a wall. Its meaning can extend as well to wall-scaled works. A modern sense of the word often evokes the idea of a public or community-facing work at large scale, often made by a collective. That modern image does not often hold for premodern settings, but what is enduring in deep historical study is the fact of mural art as both social and spatial practice. This graduate lecture course is an exploration of the diversity of mural art made in cities and centers in parts of what is now Latin America during the long autonomous era—from about 2000 BC until the European invasions of the 1520s and 30s. Lectures will present case studies of wall painting, relief sculpture, and occasionally textiles that covered the facades and interiors of public monuments, temples, courtyards, and palaces at sites in Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, and Colombia. A secondary throughline of this course will be how images and traditions of Pre-Columbian mural art have been brought into twentieth- and twenty-first-century muralisms and community practices, both in and beyond Latin America. The course's final assignment allows three options: a research paper, a digital project, or an interpretive project designed to be public-facing. While some background in this field is helpful, there are no formal prerequisites for enrollment.
Enrollment is capped at 25. Advanced undergraduate enrollment considered upon petition.
Basic statistics and machine learning strongly recommended. Bayesian approaches to machine learning. Topics include mixed-membership models, latent factor models, Bayesian nonparametric methods, probit classification, hidden Markov models, Gaussian mixture models, model learning with mean-field variational inference, scalable inference for Big Data. Applications include image processing, topic modeling, collaborative filtering and recommendation systems.
This course introduces students to the field of social work and the law – specifically the practice of social work in legal settings. Students will develop competency in forensic social work practice - working knowledge as a practitioner in an interdisciplinary setting representing clients entangled in legal systems including criminal, civil, family and immigration. Students will deconstruct the complexities of the criminal legal systems and further develop awareness in addressing clients’ concerns related to their criminal justice history – pre-arrest, arrest, disposition and re-entry. Similarly, students will gain insight into the filing of Article X petitions in family court and the pathway of a child protection case. This course complements field placements in legal/forensic settings, law minors and students interested in social work and law rooted in rights-based advocacy. This course is premised on a basic understanding of how the legacy of slavery led to mass criminalization and incarceration. Black Lives Matter.
The course will focus on understanding the theory and varied practices of restorative justice (RJ) and transformative justice (TJ), and how they are being used as alternatives to retributive and punitive responses to social problems and individual, community and institutional harm. Students will learn – through modeling and practice – how to facilitate a restorative circle which can serve as the foundation for continued use of restorative practices in social work. The class will provide an understanding of the values and principles of RJ and R, and the most-commonly used RJ models and where they are being used. It will support students in understanding their own relationship to conflict and teach students how to facilitate restorative processes using peacemaking circles. Issues of power, privilege, oppression and identity will be substantial themes throughout the course, both in understanding the need for RJ and TJ, how RJ/TJ can address them, and the ways in which these issues arise in facilitation and the RJ/TJ movement. In addition to understanding RJ, the course will also provide students with a critical analysis of other theories and practices of conflict resolution including mediation, truth and reconciliation, and transitional justice, and how all of these relate to addressing individual, communal and institutional harm. Finally, the course will discuss how social workers can use restorative justice in a variety of settings.
Understanding why people behave the way they do, what makes them change their behavior, and how these factors relate to health status and quality of life is critically important for public health professionals. The evidence for the role of individual behavior in all the major health problems throughout the world is indisputable. Equally indisputable is the complex array of factors that combine to produce behavior and deter behavior change. The purpose of this course is to build upon the material presented in the Core in order for students to be able to use individual, interpersonal, organizational and community level public health theories to explain and change health behavior.
Introduction to quantum detection and estimation theory and its applications to quantum communications, quantum radar, quantum metrology, and quantum tomography. Background on quantum mechanics, quantum detection, composite quantum systems, Gaussian states, and quantum estimation.