BA Politics, Philosophy and Economics

Year of entry: 2024

Course unit details:
Introductory Statistics for Economists

Course unit fact file
Unit code SOST10062
Credit rating 10
Unit level Level 1
Teaching period(s) Semester 2
Available as a free choice unit? Yes

Overview

The content of the course will include:

  • Background Concepts;
  • Exploratory Analysis and Descriptive Statistics;
  • Probability, Joint and Marginal Probabilities, Independence, Probability Trees;
  • Random Variables and Probability Distributions;
  • The Normal Distribution;
  • Exploring and Modelling Relationships;
  • Linear Regression;
  • Statistical Inference, Confidence Intervals and Hypothesis Testing.

Pre/co-requisites

Unit title Unit code Requirement type Description
Introductory Mathematics ECON10061 Co-Requisite Compulsory
Co-requisite: ECON10061

Aims

The aims of this course are:

  • to provide an introduction to basic statistical concepts and methods;
  • to understand concepts of probability and statistical inference;
  • to gain knowledge of methods for exploring relationships in data;
  • to develop skills in interpreting results.

The course is structured around the use of social statistics within society and will cover issues associated with the use of statistics in the public domain.

Learning outcomes

At the end of this course students should be able to:

  • use appropriate statistics, graphs and tables to explore data;
  • develop contingency tables to explore relationships with categorical data;
  • apply probability theory and understand the concept of independence;
  • use techniques to measure relationships between variables and build simple linear regression models;
  • carry out hypothesis testing and interpret the results of statistical analyses;
  • develop skills in performing statistical analysis and presentation of data and results in Excel.

Teaching and learning methods

Lectures
Tutorials/Exercise Classes

Please note the information in scheduled activity hours are for guidance only and may change.

Assessment methods

Method Weight
Written exam 100%

Feedback methods

For information about feedback please follow this link:
http://www.campus.manchester.ac.uk/tlso/map/teachinglearningassessment/assessment/sectionb-thepracticeofassessment/policyonfeedbacktostudents/.

Study hours

Scheduled activity hours
Assessment written exam 1.5
Lectures 14
Tutorials 8
Independent study hours
Independent study 76.5

Teaching staff

Staff member Role
Simon Thomas Rudkin Unit coordinator

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