This textbook presents the essential tools and core concepts of data science to public officials, policy analysts, and economists among others in order to further their application in the public sector. An expansion of the quantitative economics frameworks presented in policy and business schools, this book emphasizes the process of asking relevant questions to inform public policy. Its techniques and approaches emphasize data-driven practices, beginning with the basic programming paradigms that occupy the majority of an analyst’s time and advancing to the practical applications of...

This graduate-level textbook aims to give a unified presentation and solution of several commonly used techniques for multivariate data analysis (MDA). Unlike similar texts, it treats the MDA problems as optimization problems on matrix manifolds defined by the MDA model parameters, allowing them to be solved using (free) optimization software Manopt. The book includes numerous in-text examples as well as Manopt codes and software guides, which can be applied directly or used as templates for solving similar and new problems. The first two chapters provide an overview and essential background...