Fundamentals of Statistics

Course Outline



The approach will be largely non-mathematical, concentrating on concepts rather than mathematical theory. The first part of the course is an introduction to descriptive statistics for univariate and bivariate data, covering topics such as frequency tables, histograms and stemplots, the median, IQR & boxplots, the mean & standard deviation, levels of measurement, scatterplots, Pearson's r, introduction to regression, relationships in tabulated data, correlation and causality.

 

The second part of the course deals with the ideas of inferential statistics.  Topics covered include a basic discussion of experimental design and sampling procedures, followed by the normal distribution, sampling distributions, hypothesis testing and confidence interval for the proportion, hypothesis test for the correlation coefficient, t-tests for paired and independent data and also the one sample t-test, including effect size statistics for the t tests, the chi-squared test, and confidence intervals for the mean. SPSS will be used where appropriate as a teaching tool and computational aid (previous experience is not assumed). Students will be able to gain competency in using SPSS to obtain all the graphs and statistics covered in the course. Please refer to the equivalent course description page for the given program/week.

 

The overall focus of the course is for students to obtain a solid foundation of basic statistical concepts and procedures in order for students to then progress with some confidence into more advanced topics.

 

This course is expected to take place in a computer lab with SPSS installed.

 
Level 1 - runs over 5 days
Instructor: 

Imma Guarnieri [BSc, Grad DipEd, Grad Dip Applied Science (Social Statistics), Masters of Biostatistics] is a sessional lecturer in the School of Health Sciences at Swinburne University of Technology and in Medical Education at the University of Melbourne. She has been involved in teaching Statistics to postgraduate students for the past 20 years.

Course dates: Monday 29 June 2015 - Friday 3 July 2015
Course status: Course completed (no new applicants)
Week: 
Week 1
Recommended Background: 

None; nor is previous computing experience necessary.

Recommended Texts: 

The instructor's bound, book length course notes will serve as the course text. The notes contain detailed explanations and examples of all the statistical concepts covered along with instructions of how to obtain the various graphs and statistics from Stata.

Course fees
Member: 
$1,870
Non Member: 
$3,485
Full time student Member: 
$1,870
Program: 
Winter Program 2015
Notes: 

Participants will receive a copy of the course notes on the first day.