Statistics (21070)

Year: 2
Term: 2
Number of ECTS credits: 6

Syllabus

Statistics is the science which deals with obtaining information from numerical data. Data does not interpret itself, however, but has to be interpreted. Data can be convincing, misleading, or simply irrelevant, but is in any case more than just numbers; it is numbers with a context (Moore, 1995). Numbers provide information because of their context, and this means we can put our knowledge of the subject to good use and form judgements. 

This course aims to provide students with the basic notions of statistics, with particular attention to applied statistics and statistical inference. As students will already know the basics of data analysis and collection, the course centres on statistical inference as the group of propositions which go beyond the available data to reach conclusions about a wider universe. Statistical inference does not only arrive at conclusions but it accompanies them - using knowledge of probability - with a statement about their reliability.

Contents section 1

The concept of statistical inference: sample and proportion, statistic and parameter, sample error, representative samples and biased samples.

Contents section 2

The concept of probability: events, randomness, sample space and rules of probability. Discrete and continuous random variables. Binomial and normal distributions.

Contents section 3

Sample distributions of a statistic. Median and proportion sample distributions. Central limit theorem.

Contents section 4

Confidence estimation: the concept of confidence, confidence intervals for medians, for proportion. Median comparison and proportion comparison.

Contents section 5

Hypothesis contrasting: null hypothesis, alternative hypothesis, statistical contrast, significance level, type I errors and type II errors, test power. P-value and statistical significance.

Contents section 6

T probability distributions: t tests for contrasting median equality hypothesis (paired and independent samples). The chi-square test and other hypothesis contrasts.

Contents section 7

Sampling methods (simple, stratified, conglomerate and multistage randomness).