Merging theory and statistics in the pursuit of political science.

the star lab provides state-of-the-art computing resources for political science scholars engaged in advanced modeling and statistical analysis. Substantive research areas include

• political economy
• international conflict and international trade
• voting behavior, elections, and political institutions in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America, among others.

A broad range of modeling and statistical research is undertaken in the lab, from specifying models and solving for their equilibria to employing statistical techniques, such as

• Bayesian markov chain monte carlo estimation
• bootstrapping
• nonparametric regression
• estimating strategic models
• parallel processing

The lab currently hosts two servers and 36 workstations, 24 of which are configured as a Linux cluster used for distributed and parallel processing. The usual hardware amenities are also available, such as a high-speed duplex printing, and wireless connectivity. The available software includes R, Stata, SPSS, Gauss, EViews, WinBUGS, Maple, WinEdt, MiKTeX, as well as the usual WinXP and Linux suite of software.

On this site, you can find links to data repositories, software developed by members of the Department, current faculty and student projects, a list of our technical courses, a link to the polRis site, help and FAQ files, links to other sites of interest, policies for using the star lab, and contact information.