ST107      Half Unit
Quantitative Methods (Statistics)

This information is for the 2013/14 session.

Teacher responsible

Dr James Abdey COL.7.09

Availability

This course is compulsory on the BSc in Social Policy and Economics. This course is available on the BSc in Accounting and Finance, BSc in Environmental Policy with Economics, BSc in Geography with Economics, BSc in Government and Economics, BSc in Human Resource Management and Employment Relations, BSc in Management, BSc in Management Sciences and BSc in Philosophy and Economics. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit and to General Course students.

This course cannot be taken with ST102 Elementary Statistical Theory.

Pre-requisites

A-level Mathematics

Course content

The elementary statistical tools necessary for further study in management and economics with an emphasis on the applicability of the methods to management and economic problems. An introduction to statistical concepts. Centre and spread of a distribution. Probability, conditional probability. The Binomial, Poisson and Normal distributions. Covariance and linear combinations of random variables. Random sampling, sampling distributions. Efficiency, biased and unbiased estimators. Confidence intervals for means and proportions, and difference in means and proportions, the Student's 't' distribution. Hypothesis tests, power and p-value. Correlation and Regression. Fitting a line, least squares estimation. Sampling variability of the estimates. Confidence intervals and tests. Predicting response variable, p-value.

Teaching

20 hours of lectures and 9 hours of classes in the LT. 4 hours of lectures and 2 hours of classes in the ST.

Formative coursework

Weekly example sheets will be set and students are expected to submit solutions to the class teacher each week.

Indicative reading

All course materials made available via Moodle, including notes to accompany the lectures, but this can be supplemented with additional background reading. Recommended supplementary text is:

Newbold, P., W.L. Carlson and B.M. Thorne Statistics for Business and Economics. (London: Prentice-Hall, 2009) seventh edition.

Assessment

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours) in the main exam period.

Key facts

Department: Statistics

Total students 2012/13: 319

Average class size 2012/13: 15

Value: Half Unit

Guidelines for interpreting course guide information

PDAM skills

  • Problem solving
  • Application of numeracy skills