Peter J Wilcoxen

PAI 789 Advanced Policy Analysis

Spring 2025

General Information About the Course

General Information, Textbook and Requirements
General information that you may need at the beginning of the semester.
Course Outline
Preliminary lists of topics that will be covered this semester.
Materials from Class Sessions
Where to find PDFs of notes and other materials from each class.

Quick Reference for Google Classroom, Slack and GitHub

Google classroom
 42n77dw  
Slack workspace pai789s25  
GitHub organization maxwell-pai789  

Key Resources

Course Google Drive Folder
Access to data files that aren't built into the assignment repositories.
Software Packages
Download links for key software packages used throughout the semester.

Announcements

Apr 17 No lab on 4/18 due to travel. Labs as usual on 4/25 and 5/2. 
Apr 12 As mentioned in class on 3/4, the repositories are due Sunday 5/4 at 11:59 pm 
Mar 4 The presentation schedule is posted below. 
Jan 13 Welcome! 

Computational Exercises (GitHub)

  1. GitHub Warmup (g01) - Due 1/17
  2. Hello World (g02) - Due 1/17
  3. Lists (g03) - Due 1/24
  4. Basic For Loops (g04) - Due 1/24
  5. Dictionaries (g05) - Due 1/24
  6. If and Strings (g06) - Due 1/31
  7. Functions (g07) - Due 1/31
  8. Power Plant Options (g08) - Due 1/31
  9. Market Equilibrium (g09) - Due 2/7
  10. Residential Solar in NY (g10) - Due 2/7
  11. Distributional Analysis Using Pandas (g11) - Due 2/7
  12. Analyzing Residential Property by Zip Code (g12) - Due 2/14
  13. Working with Large Zip Files (g13) - Due 2/14
  14. Joining Geographic and Census Data (g14) - Due 2/21
  15. Joining Weather and Electricity Data (g15) - Due 2/21
  16. Computing County Dissimilarity Indexes (g16) - Due 2/28
  17. Aggregating Political Contributions (g17) - Due 2/28
  18. Introduction to Seaborn (g18) - Due 3/7
  19. Using the Census API (g19) - Due 3/7
  20. Educational Attainment in New York (g20) - Due 3/21
  21. Analyzing the Contributions Data (g21) - Due 3/21
  22. Installing Geopandas (g22) - Due 3/21
  23. Median Earnings for New York Counties (g23) - Due 3/28
  24. Mapping Political Contributions in Pennsylvania (g24) - Due 3/28
  25. Building a Buffer Around a Highway (g25) - Due 4/4
  26. Multi-Ring Buffers and Spatial Joins (g26) - Due 4/4
  27. Residential Demographics Near Interstates (g27) - Due 4/11
  28. Educational Impacts of Covid-19 (g28) - Due 4/11
  29. GIS Distance Operations (g29) - No due date
  30. Geocoding (g30) - No due date
  31. Web Scraping (g31) - No due date
  32. Handling Directories and Files (g32) - No due date
  33. Estimation and Monte Carlo Analysis (g33) - No due date

Analytical Exercises (Google Classroom)

Listed under the Materials from Class entry for the day they were given.

Other Documentation and Resources

Poster Session Schedule for Spring 2025
Presentation titles and GitHub links.
Downloading Data Files from the Class Google Drive
How to avoid data corruption.
How to Stop Safari from Unzipping Files
Turning off unhelpful behavior
About Scores and Feedback on Assignments
Information about assignment scores and feedback.
Guidelines for Using GitHub
A few tips on how to use GitHub in this course.
Best Practices for Documentation in Python
An excellent guide to writing comments and documentation.
Operator Precedence in Python
Table showing the order of precedence from highest to lowest.
Markdown Cheatsheet
A great quick reference guide
Guidelines for Presentations
Please refer to these when preparing your talk at the end of the semester.
Documentation for Geopandas
An extension of Pandas for handling spatial data.
Documentation for Pandas
The official documentation for Pandas.
Economics Skills Project
Practice exercises on microeconomics topics, including PV and uncertainty analysis.
Google Document Translation Service
Able to translate docx, pdf, pptx, and xlsx files to and from many languages.
How to Avoid DLL Errors on Windows
How to work around some unusual Anaconda configuration issues in Windows
How to Turn Off Automatic Data Conversions in Excel
Recent versions of Excel support this, which is super helpful.
Matplotlib Colormap Documentation
A guide to the colormaps and palettes available.
Notation for Computational Exercises
A brief explanation of some short instructions you may see in the assignments.
Poster Sessions from Previous Semesters
Presentation titles and GitHub links.
Python Documentation at Codeacademy
Quick access to tips on key Python topics.
Python Graph Gallery
An excellent and very broad collection of example graphs, with code.
Seaborn Data Visualization Library
Very powerful Python module for statistical data visualization.
Type Hints Cheat Sheet
Quick reference for type hints for more complex data types.
UTM Locator Map
A quick reference map showing which UTM zones correspond to different parts of the world.
xkcd Color Survey
A very large survey of colors and color names. A set of xkcd colors is available in Matplotlib and described here

Data Sources

CDC Behaviorial Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS)
Health-related risk behaviors, chronic health conditions, and use of preventive services.
CDC Main Data Page
Main entry point for CDC data.
Census Documentation
Selected information useful in working with Census data
Census Shapefiles
Links to the key download pages a the Census
Census State and Local Government Finance Data
Available annually.
Central New York Real Estate Transactions
From 2020 and updated weekly
City of Syracuse Open Data Portal
Includes GIS data.
Dartmouth Atlas of Healtcare Data
Extensive data from Medicare and other sources.
Data.gov
The federal government's open data access portal.
EIA US Energy Atlas
Extensive GIS data on the US energy sector.
EM-DAT
International Disaster Database
Federal Election Commission
Data on political contributions.
FEMA Flood Map Service Center
Find flood maps by using the "Search All Products" tool and selecting "NFHL Data-County"
FEMA Open Data
FEMA's open data repository
General Social Survey (GSS)
Survey of US adults covering a wide range of topics and going back 50 years.
ICPSR
A long-standing university consortium that provides access to many social science datasets.
International Shapefiles
Links to pages that provide international GIS data.
Life-M
Intergenerational database of 15 M individuals born in Ohio or North Carolina
Massachusetts Property Tax Parcels
Shapefiles and data on tax parcels in the state.
Microsoft Building Footprint Data
Datasets of building footprints by state.
MIT Election Lab
A wide range of datasets on US Federal elections.
National Historical Geographic Information System
Summary tables and time series GIS data for the US back to 1790.
New York State
The NYS open data access portal.
New York State Department of Education
Comprehensive data about New York schools.
New York State GIS Clearinghouse
An extensive repository of NYS GIS data.
New York State Property Tax Data
Data on all tax parcels in New York. Provided by county for parcel centroids.
Public Opinion and Social Attitudes Data
Extensive list of databases curated by the Michigan State University library.
SU Library Numeric Data Resources Page
SU maintains a page with lots of links to data sources.
US EPA
Entry page for EPA data.
US International Trade Commission (USITC)
Data on tariffs and trade.
World Bank Open Data
Open access development data.
Site Index | Zoom | Admin
 URL: https://cleanenergyfutures.insightworks.com/pages/4874.html
Peter J Wilcoxen, The Maxwell School, Syracuse University
 Revised 04/22/2025