Criteria for approval of outline
As mentioned in the syllabus, one of the goals of this course is for you to become familiar with
how to use publicly available data to check facts and satisfy your curiosity about the Middle
East.
The purpose of this assignment is therefore to give you practice testing/illustrating an argument
using data and graphs. Note that the data pattern you find may not support your original
argument, but this is totally fine. Practice finding appropriate data and graphs to satisfy your
curiosity and illustrate your thoughts is the goal here.
One very important thing to note is that we want to see the effort of collecting data on your
own by checking publicly available data, and making the graphs and tables by yourself.
The tables and graphs should not be a copy and paste of an existing article.
You do not have to make fancy arguments, but you have to think about what kind of data tables
and graphs can illustrate your arguments and satisfy your curiosity.
Bearing the above in mind, an outline should have the following elements.
Motivation of the brief paper
Statement of your hypothesis/point: the statement has to involve the countries we
discuss in this course.
Logical argument of your hypothesis: this can be two to three sentences. Do not
write long paragraphs.
Data
Data Source
Variable definition: Write down the definition of the variables in your data if
the variable you are using is not common. Note: When you see a variable
in your data, always first check the definition, see if the definition fits into
the measure you have in mind.
Data presentation
one scatter plot: specify the x, y variables, inclusion of countries, and
produce one scatter plot. Note that we encourage you to also use other
kinds of graphs, e.g., bar and line graphs, but you must have one scatter
plot.
The reason you choose to compare the selected countries for certain
years in the graphs you will produce. The comparison level need not
be at the country level. For example, you can also compare sectors
within a country.
Have at least one population weighted average. You can use the weighted
averages to compare one area to another: e.g., Sub-Saharan vs
Meditarranean; Middle East vs Latin America. Or you can use population
weighted average to compare a country to the area, e.g., Tunisia vs
Mediterranean countries.
This google doc is an example of an outline that meets the required criteria.