Self-study

The sixteen companion modules and the exercise, about thirty-five hours at whatever pace suits

This track is for working through the course without a facilitator, a cohort or a fixed clock. It orders the sixteen modules of the companion curriculum and the exercise itself into a route that holds together when nobody is standing at the front, and it can be spread over as many weeks as you like. By the end you have reproduced a published result from the data behind it, stated an estimand and drawn the causal graph that goes with it, declared one specification in a preregistration before running it, put the result on the class chart, and archived the whole thing in a version-controlled repository.

Every stage links pages that already exist on this site, and the hours are rough estimates for a first pass. Two things work differently when you are alone, and both are named where they arise: the exercise has no facilitator to rescue a stalled machine, and the class chart has no other participants on it, though neither of those stops you finishing the course.

	What happens
Stage 1 – The case, and what you are aiming at	The claim, the three verdicts, and the shape of the whole thing.
Stage 2 – A language, an IDE, and a document to write in	R, the IDE and Quarto, for anyone who lacks them.
Stage 3 – The models the claim is argued with	Every model that the exercise will offer you, and the measurement decisions behind the outcome.
Stage 4 – The question underneath the models	Estimands and causal graphs.
Stage 5 – The exercise	The five tasks, worked alone.
Stage 6 – Reading the curve you joined	What the curve you joined establishes and what it cannot.
Stage 7 – Two extensions	Simulation, and the individual level.
Stage 8 – Putting the work where it can be found	Repositories, git and GitHub.