ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we will consider how the statistical approach, beginning with the most basic “univariate” techniques, can be applied to the cross-national analysis of political phenomena. In doing so, the student may also highlight the individual country or groups of countries that stand apart on one or more of the important political attributes explored. Specifically, we will demonstrate how descriptive statistics are used to summarize four basic variables within our sample CROSSNAT.50: POPULATE (population), AREA (area), GDP97 (wealth), and AGE1800 (sovereign duration in years since 1800). Because we will be working with ecological data measured at the interval/ratio level, we will focus on frequency distributions, percentiles, medians, means, variance and standard deviations, skewness, standard error, confidence intervals, and histograms.
