The purpose of this course is to introduce the basic concepts of statistics through illustrative use of statistical methods for solving applied problems. Emphasis will be placed on statistical reasoning, rather than derivation of theoretical details. Students will learn to solve common statistical problems using statistical software. This course is designed for students who wish to pursue a non-quantitative major at SMU. Students who intend to pursue a quantitative major should take its companion course, COR-STAT1203 Introduction to Statistical Theory.
This course gives students an introduction from the basics to mid-level statistics and applications in running analysis through manual means plus Excel, with interpretation through practical cases and examples. By the end of this course, students will have mastered descriptive and summary statistics, probability axioms, discrete univariate probability distributions, continuous univariate distributions, regression, means, variance, covariance, sampling distributions, central limit theorems, point and. interval estimations, one-, two-, multiple-sample hypothesis tests.
At the basics, students should be able to:
- define, collect, organize, and visualise data
- conduct simple linear regression analysis
- understand and apply basic probability concepts
- understand various probability distributions, including discrete and continuous distributions
- construct and interpret point and interval estimates
- conduct hypothesis test
