Demography 210 is an advanced course in basic demographic methods. It presents training in lifetables, including multiple-decrement lifetables, hazard models including Cox proportional hazards and Gompertz distributions, frailty, and unobserved heterogeneity, population projection with Leslie Matrices, the concept of a synthetic cohort, and the fundamentals of stable population theory. It also includes a condensed treatment of elementary topics treated in more detail in Demography 110, including exponential growth, singulate mean measures of age at first marriage, and indices of fertility limitation.
Demography 210 involves use of computer workstations (with the R statistical language) and some reliance on basic calculus.
The textbook is called Essential Demographic Methods. It can be purchased from Copy Central, 2560 Bancroft Way in Berkeley across from Hearst Gym.
Students have the option of either enrolling in both Demography 110 and Demography 210 simultaneously, or of enrolling ``solo'' in Demography 210. Solo students will need to read the textbook sections covered in the Demography 110 lectures with care each week, and work a selection of solo exercises.
Prof. Wachter's office is in Room 208 in 2232 Piedmont Avenue. Office hours are from 11:15 to 12:00 on Tuesdays and from 1:45 to 2:45 on Wednesdays; a sign-up sheet is posted by the door. Romesh Silva is the Graduate Student Instructor for the course;
Assignments are posted on the secure website and are due each week at the beginning of class. Exercises will often be discussed in class, so no late solution sets will be accepted in normal circumstances. There will be a short open-book mid-term examination in a format to be arranged. An in-class final examination will be given on 5 December 2012. For the grade, the in-class examination will count 45 percent, the weekly exercises 45 percent, and the mid-term 10 percent. Class participation will count in your favor in the process of translating numerical scores into letter grades. Students wishing some refresher training in calculus should consult with Professor Wachter.