Dr James Abdey COL.5.10

This course is compulsory on the BSc in Actuarial Science, BSc in Business Mathematics and Statistics, BSc in Data Science, BSc in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics, BSc in Finance, BSc in Financial Mathematics and Statistics, BSc in Mathematics and Economics, BSc in Mathematics with Economics and BSc in Mathematics, Statistics and Business. This course is available on the BSc in Accounting and Finance, BSc in Philosophy and Economics and BSc in Philosophy, Politics 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 ST107 Quantitative Methods (Statistics), ST108 Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences, ST109 Elementary Statistical Theory I or ST110 Elementary Statistical Theory II.

A-level Mathematics.

No previous knowledge of statistics is assumed.

The course provides a precise and accurate treatment of introductory probability and distribution theory, statistical ideas, methods and techniques. Topics covered are data visualisation and descriptive statistics, probability theory, random variables, common distributions of random variables, multivariate random variables, sampling distributions of statistics, point estimation, interval estimation, hypothesis testing, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and linear regression.

22 hours of lectures, 15 hours of classes and 10 hours of workshops in the MT. 20 hours of lectures, 15 hours of classes and 10 hours of workshops in the LT. 2 hours of lectures in the ST.

This course will be delivered through a combination of lecutres, workshops and classes, totalling a minimum of 90 hours across Michaelmas Term and Lent Term. This year, some or all of this teaching may be delivered through a combination of virtual classes and flipped-lectures/workshops delivered as short online videos. This course does not include reading weeks.

Weekly exercises will be set and students are expected to submit solutions to their class teacher each week for feedback. 

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

Larsen R.J. and M.L. Marx (2017) Introduction to Mathematical Statistics and Its Applications (sixth edition), Pearson (earlier editions are also fine).

Exam (50%, duration: 2 hours, reading time: 10 minutes) in the January exam period.
Exam (50%, duration: 2 hours, reading time: 10 minutes) in the summer exam period.

Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.