Lectures: 12:30 - 1:45 Tuesdays and Thursdays, Perloff 1102 Discussion Sections: ID # Section Day Time Place TA 347-637-201 1A T 9:00 Bunche 2178 Kim 347-637-202 1B T 4:00 Hershey 1655 Kim 347-637-203 1C T 3:00 Bunche 2178 Kim 347-637-204 1D R 10:00 MathSci 5217 Burgard 347-637-205 1E R 9:00 Geology 4645 Burgard 347-637-206 1F R 4:00 Bunche 2178 Burgard Professor: David D. McFarland, Hershey 2401, phone 825-6380. (Messages may be left at the main Sociology office, Hershey 2201, phone 825-1313.) Email: mcfarland@soc.ucla.edu Web: http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/soc/faculty/mcfarland/soc157 Office hours: TBA. (For quick questions it may be more convenient to see me right after lecture, in the classroom.) TAs (Offices, office hours TBA): Sarah Burgard, sburgard@ucla.edu Susan Kim, kims@ucla.edu
Do NOT be misled by the registrar's notation, "Enforced Requisites: None". As defined in the registrar's dictionary, that does not mean "no prerequisite", only that the prerequisite is not sufficiently simple-minded for URSA to enforce it automatically. URSA is smart enough to understand "Stat M12", and could be programmed to lock out anyone whose UCLA record does not include that particular course. But that would be unfair to someone who took a similar course in another department, or to a transfer student who took a similar course at another college. Alas, URSA is not smart enough to understand "or equivalent".
The statistics prerequisite is a real one. Central to social stratification are such quantitative resources as wealth, income, education, and prestige. Stratification studies make use of such statistical tools as contingency tables, correlation coefficients and regression equations, in order to describe and explain how some get more, and others get less, of those scarce but desired resources.
An introductory statistics course is one of the lower division requirements for prospective sociology majors; take it before you take this course.
There will be no final examination. I am sure most of you will find other things to do at the appointed time, 3-6 pm on Thursday 15 June.
Students are responsible for all the reading material, whether or not it is also covered in lecture or section, and for all the lecture material, whether or not it is also covered in readings or section. The lectures complement the readings in various ways, ranging from explanations and elaborations (mainly early in the course) to updated information and additional material not available in the readings.
The examinations will cover both lecture material and reading assignments, giving them approximately equal emphasis, and will include both multiple choice and short answer questions. Links to sample examination questions are provided below, to facilitate reviews.
The short paper, of approximately five double spaced typed pages, will be a brief biography of someone the student knows well, describing the subject's current social status and explaining it in terms of personal characteristics, background characteristics, social contexts, or events by which it has been affected. It is to be written in the light of reading assignments and lecture material, following more detailed guidelines.
Furthermore, on the day those short papers are due, each student is to attend the lecture session and, if called on, give a brief oral summary to the class.
Each student is to submit one suggested examination question for each of the assigned readings (that is, one question per article; several questions per week). Each question is to be accompanied by an answer the student considers appropriate, with specific justification (e.g., author and page number, the latter for the specific information rather than the entire article). Questions may be multiple choice, or short-answer. A multiple choice question should have four plausible alternatives, with one correct answer. A short-answer question might require a calculation, for example, or a list, or a couple of paragraphs. Over the entire quarter, three of the questions submitted are to be short-answer.
David B. Grusky, ed. 1994. Social Stratification. Boulder: Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-1065-2. HM-146-G78-1994.
