This month's meetup will focus on the applications of R to academic research. Econometrics and social network analysis have formed the methodological foundation for most contemporary empirical social science research. As such, there are several R packages for performing this type of analysis. Andrew Little and Drew Conway of the Department of Politics at NYU will present a brief overview of a few of the most useful packages in this space.

Econometrics
Andrew will discuss two econometric packages developed by Gary King of Harvard, and how he has used them in his research.

• Zelig - a single, easy-to-use package that can estimate, help interpret, and present the results of a large range of statistical methods.
  
• MatchIt - implements a wide range of sophisticated matching methods, making it possible to greatly reduce the dependence of causal inferences on hard-to-justify, but commonly made, statistical modeling assumptions.
  

Social Network Analysis
Drew will discuss network analysis in R and provide a an overview of how to perform it through example. The R package Drew will review is igraph.

• igraph - library for complex network research