Demography 110 is an introductory course in demographic methods. In it you will be learning how demographers measure population growth, mortality, fertility, marriage, and age structure. This knowledge is valuable for thinking systematically about population problems in our country and the world. You will be gaining skill in analyzing processes which you yourselves will be part of as you age and make decisions about marriage, children, migration, and survival.
Demography 110 should equip you to calculate for yourselves and interpret all the standard demographic indices, including the "expectation of life at birth", the "net reproduction ratio", and Lotka's "intrinsic rate of natural increase". The course should also help you to understand the theory behind these measures, and especially how the concept of a "stable population" is related to the basic principles of population projection.
Demography 110 is a "hands-on" course, with weekly exercises. You will need a hand calculator which can handle logarithms ``to the base e'' and exponential functions. Please bring your calculator to class every day. Data sets and course information will be available on the course website, but you will not be required to do computations with the computer.
Demography 110 meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30 to 11:00 in 110 Wheeler Hall. Office Hours are Tuesdays after class and Wednesdays from 1:45 to 2:45. The Demography building, 2232 Piedmont Avenue, is a stucco house near the southeast corner of the campus across from the football stadium. Our Graduate Student Instructor is Romesh Silva. The address wachter@demog.berkeley.edu is my email address. -->
The textbook Essential Demographic Methods may be purchased Copy Central, 2560 Bancroft Way. It should be available by Tuesday, 22 August 2012.
Along with the weekly exercises, due at the beginning of class each Tuesday, there will be a mid-term examination and a final examination. You will also be preparing a brief report on the demography of a country of your choice. The exercises will often be discussed in class, so late solution sets will not usually be accepted. For the grade, the final examination will count about 45%, the exercises 30%, your report 10%, and the mid-term 15%, and class participation will also count in your favor.
Students are encouraged to discuss exercises with each other or work together on the ideas for solving them. However, please write up and submit the solutions in your own handwriting or from your own original computer file, and please list the names of anyone with whom you have worked at the end of each assignment.
In Fall 2010, the grade distribution included 22 A's, 12 B's, 6 C's, 1 D and 2 F. The two F grades were for student who ceased coming to class. Failures in this course are very rare. It is our aim to see everyone succeed with his or her goals.