This week will provide a practical and hands-on introduction to using computational methods, focusing on how they relate to closed-form analytical models and empirical tests. As a way of grounding the key topics in computational modeling, we will cover social network theory and the techniques used to analyze politically-relevant networks (with a substantive focus on problems such as Congressional co-sponsorships and judicial citations). A key feature of this treatment will be to demonstrate how one connects the analysis of social networks with specific hypotheses and tests on observed data. Finally, we will also provide one additional substantive unit based on the interests of guest faculty. In previous years, this has included computational models of elections, international conflict, and bargaining.