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14 September 2005

Math Camp

Michael Kellermann

When I was an undergrad, the first political science class that I took was taught by the late A.F.K. Organski. At one point, someone asked him what advice he would give to freshmen interested in political science as a major. "Take as many math courses as you can," he said with his inimitable accent. I'm pretty sure that this was not the advice that most people wanted to hear, and that it was honored more in the breach than the observance, but it was sound advice nonetheless.

In keeping with this idea, several Harvard programs offer short math refresher courses for incoming graduate students, including Government, Economics, and the Kennedy School. The Gov Department's "math (p)re-fresher" is held during the first two weeks of September. We cover calculus, probability, linear algebra, and a bit of optimization theory, along with an introduction to some of the software (R, Xemacs, and Latex) that we use in the department's methods courses. All told, it is a quick review of about five semesters worth of undergraduate math courses in the span of ten days. As you might imagine, there is considerable variation in the amount of "pre-freshing" versus "re-freshing" that goes on in the course.

I'm curious about the prevalence of these kind of "math camp" courses in the social sciences. I only know of a few others in political science, but I get the sense that they are more common in economics. Are there any sociology math camps out there? Psychology? Public health? If you have a math camp, I'd be interested in taking a look at your syllabus. Comments should be enabled.

Posted by James Greiner at 7:00 AM