How to Read Math in Political Science Papers

It’s very common for students to feel overwhelmed by the math in political science papers. Many of my peers have told me that while they’re comfortable solving traditional problem sets—like calculating derivatives or working through algebra problems—they still find it intimidating to read papers with dense mathematical sections. The same math, when presented in a textbook or problem set format, often feels manageable. But in a paper, with so much notation and surrounding text, it’s easy to feel lost.

This is not necessarily a math skills problem—it’s more like a language barrier. Reading math in academic papers requires learning how to “decode” symbols and notation in context, rather than just performing calculations.

The purpose of this exercise is to help you practice reading math in real political science papers. At first, the text may look intimidating—especially since we are only looking at excerpts without full context. That’s normal. You don’t need to understand every detail of the author’s argument; instead, we’ll focus only on the mathematical notations.

In the exercises that follow, you’ll practice identifying the roles of Greek letters and mathematical symbols. Are they being used as simple notational shortcuts, or as variables with substantive meanings? Are they functions, or constants? By answering these questions, you’ll build intuition for how to approach mathematical writing.

The examples come from four subfields—International Relations (IR), Comparative Politics (CP), American Politics (AP), and Methods. In political science, math most often appears in theory and methods sections: theory sections tend to use more calculus-based notation, while methods sections typically rely on linear algebra and probability theory.