R for Political Data Science: A Practical Guide is a handbook for political scientists new to R who want to learn the most useful and common ways to interpret and analyze political data. It was written by political scientists, thinking about the many real-world problems faced in their work. The book has 16 chapters and is organized in three sections. The first, on the use of R, is for those users who are learning R or are migrating from another software. The second section, on econometric models, covers OLS, binary and survival models, panel data, and causal inference. The third section is a data science toolbox of some the most useful tools in the discipline: data imputation, fuzzy merge of large datasets, web mining, quantitative text analysis, network analysis, mapping, spatial cluster analysis, and principal component analysis. Key features: Each chapter has the most up-to-date and simple option available for each task, assuming minimal prerequisites and no previous experience in R Makes extensive use of the Tidyverse, the group of packages that has revolutionized the use of R Provides a step-by-step guide that you can replicate using your own data Includes exercises in every chapter for course use or self-study Focuses on practical-based approaches to statistical inference rather than mathematical formulae Supplemented by an R package, including all data As the title suggests, this book is highly applied in nature, and is designed as a toolbox for the reader. It can be used in methods and data science courses, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. It will be equally useful for a university student pursuing a PhD, political consultants, or a public official, all of whom need to transform their datasets into substantive and easily interpretable conclusions.

Data Science and Analytics for Ordinary People is a collection of blogs I have written on LinkedIn over the past year. As I continue to perform big data analytics, I continue to discover, not only my weaknesses in communicating the information, but new insights into using the information obtained from analytics and communicating it. These are the kinds of things I blog about and are contained herein. Data science and analytics have been used as synonyms on occasion. In reality data science includes data modeling, data mining, data analysis, database architecture and so on. Analytics is what we do to make sense of the data. That is, we take data and turn it into information for business decision makers. This our course implies that we translate our data science jargon into English.

Behavior Analysis with Machine Learning Using R introduces machine learning and deep learning concepts and algorithms applied to a diverse set of behavior analysis problems. It focuses on the practical aspects of solving such problems based on data collected from sensors or stored in electronic records. The included examples demonstrate how to perform common data analysis tasks such as: data exploration, visualization, preprocessing, data representation, model training and evaluation. All of this, using the R programming language and real-life behavioral data. Even though the examples focus on behavior analysis tasks, the covered underlying concepts and methods can be applied in any other domain. No prior knowledge in machine learning is assumed. Basic experience with R and basic knowledge in statistics and high school level mathematics are beneficial. Features: Build supervised machine learning models to predict indoor locations based on WiFi signals, recognize physical activities from smartphone sensors and 3D skeleton data, detect hand gestures from accelerometer signals, and so on. Program your own ensemble learning methods and use Multi-View Stacking to fuse signals from heterogeneous data sources. Use unsupervised learning algorithms to discover criminal behavioral patterns. Build deep learning neural networks with TensorFlow and Keras to classify muscle activity from electromyography signals and Convolutional Neural Networks to detect smiles in images. Evaluate the performance of your models in traditional and multi-user settings. Build anomaly detection models such as Isolation Forests and autoencoders to detect abnormal fish behaviors. This book is intended for undergraduate/graduate students and researchers from ubiquitous computing, behavioral ecology, psychology, e-health, and other disciplines who want to learn the basics of machine learning and deep learning and for the more experienced individuals who want to apply machine learning to analyze behavioral data.

The disintegration and questioning of global governance structures and a re-orientation toward national politics combined with the spread of technological innovations such as big data, social media, and phenomena like fake news, populism, or questions of global health policies make it necessary for the introduction of new methods of inquiry and the adaptation of established methods in Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). This accessible handbook offers concise chapters from expert international contributors covering a diverse range of new and established FPA methods. Embracing methodological pluralism and a belief in the value of an open discussion about methods’ assumptions and diverging positions, it provides new, state-of-the-art research approaches, as well as introductions to a range of established methods. Each chapter follows the same approach, introducing the method and its development, discussing strengths, requirements, limitations, and potential pitfalls while illustrating the method’s application using examples from empirical research. Embracing methodological pluralism and problem-oriented research that engages with real-world questions, the authors examine quantitative and qualitative traditions, rationalist and interpretivist perspectives, as well as different substantive backgrounds. The book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students in global politics, foreign policy, and methods-related classes across the social sciences.

Focuses on the assumptions underlying the algorithms rather than their statistical properties Presents cutting-edge analysis of factor models and finite mixture models. Uses a hands-on approach to examine the assumptions made by the models and when the models fail to estimate accurately Utilizes interesting real-world data sets that can be used to analyze important microeconomic problems Introduces R programming concepts throughout the book. Includes appendices that discuss many of the concepts introduced in the book, as well as measures of uncertainty in microeconometrics.

Textual Statistics with R comprehensively covers the main multidimensional methods in textual statistics supported by a specially-written package in R. Methods discussed include correspondence analysis, clustering, and multiple factor analysis for contigency tables. Each method is illuminated by applications. The book is aimed at researchers and students in statistics, social sciences, hiistory, literature and linguistics. The book will be of interest to anyone from practitioners needing to extract information from texts to students in the field of massive data, where the ability to process textual data is becoming essential.

This book is aimed at conservation and development practitioners who need to learn and use R in a part-time professional context. It gives people with a non-technical background a set of skills to graph, map, and model in R. It also provides background on data integration in project management and covers fundamental statistical concepts. The book aims to demystify R and give practitioners the confidence to use it. Key Features: • Viewing data science as part of a greater knowledge and decision making system • Foundation sections on inference, evidence, and data integration • Plain English explanations of R functions • Relatable examples which are typical of activities undertaken by conservation and development organisations in the developing world • Worked examples showing how data analysis can be incorporated into project reports

Little known to many, R works just as well with JavaScript—this book delves into the various ways both languages can work together. The ultimate aim of this work is to put the reader at ease with inviting JavaScript in their data science workflow. In that respect the book is not teaching one JavaScript but rather we show how little JavaScript can greatly support and enhance R code. Therefore, the focus is on integrating external JavaScript libraries and no prior knowledge of JavaScript is required. Key Features: ● Easy to pick up. ● An entry way to learning JavaScript for R. ● Covers topics not covered anywhere else. ● Easy to follow along.

R Markdown is a powerful tool for combining analysis and reporting into the single document in the spirit of literate programming and reproducible research. Since the birth of the rmarkdown package in early 2014, R Markdown has grown substantially from a package that supports a few output formats (such as HTML, PDF, and Word) to an extensive and diverse ecosystem that enables the creation of books, blogs, scientific articles, websites, and more. Due to its rapid success, this ecosystem is hard to learn completely meaning that R Markdown users, from novices to advanced users, likely do not know all that these packages have to offer. The R Markdown Cookbook confronts this gap by showcasing short, practical examples of wide-ranging tips and tricks to get the most out of these tools. After reading this book, you will learn how to: Enhance your R Markdown content with diagrams, citations, and dynamically generated text Streamline your workflow with child documents, code chunk references, and caching Control the formatting and layout with Pandoc markdown syntax or by writing custom HTML and LaTeX templates Utilize chunk options and hooks to fine-tune how your code is processed Switch between different language engineers to seamlessly incorporate python, D3, and more into your analysis

Challenging the often-hyperbolic claims that have been made around the use of data in election campaigns for voter manipulation and suppression, this book provides unrivalled evidence of how parties actually behave. It shows that data-driven campaigning practice is not inherently problematic or new, but neither is it uniform, rather systemic, regulatory and party level factors affecting the nature of campaigning. Providing detailed empirical examples from Australia, Canada, Germany, the UK and US, this book shows how parties campaign and explains why parties differ, thereby resetting prevailing understanding of the role of data in campaigns.