Welcome to CSS 1!

CSS 1 | Sean Trott | Fall 2023 | UCSD

Course Overview

This course will teach you how to approach research questions in social science from a computational perspective. This includes thinking computationally, as well as developing the skillset to implement the ideas and solutions you think of. Specifically, you will learn to program in Python.

This course is one of the three core courses for the CSS Minor at UCSD, along with CSS 2 and CSS 100. Note that there are no official prerequisites for this course; please see the course expectations page for more information.

Note

This course has undergone various iterations. The current version owes a big debt to this version taught by Professor John Serences. Although the specific labs and lectures will be new, the underlying content will be similar.

Ideas for course structure have also been adapted from COGS 18, developed by Professor Shannon Ellis and Dr. Tom Donoghue.

Current Iteration

The current version of this class is Fall 2023.

Grading

Your grade will be determined by your performance on weekly labs, several problem sets, and a final project.

There are no midterms or final exams; see the syllabus for more details.

Topics

Topics covered will include:

• Common tools/software for Python programming, e.g., Jupyter notebooks.

• Python basics, e.g., variables, conditional statements (“if/else”), and functions.

• Working with sequences, such as lists.

• Packages for scientific computing, such as pandas.

For more details, check out the syllabus.