Fundamentals of Statistics

Due to the popularity of this course originally offered in week 1, a second running of this course is now available in week 2.

 

Course Outline
This is an introductory unit in statistical methods with the emphasis on statistical techniques applicable to the social sciences.

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 intervals for proportions, hypothesis testing on Pearson's r, t-tests for paired and independent data, the chi-squared test, and confidence intervals for the mean. The statistical package 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.
 

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.

 

 
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 17 January 2011 - Friday 21 January 2011
Course status: Course completed (no new applicants)
Week: 
Week 2
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 SPSS.

Course fees
Member: 
$1,550
Non Member: 
$2,800
Full time student Member: 
$1,550
Notes: 

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