BA Modern Language and Business & Management (French)

Introduction to fundamental methods of statistics, which are the basis of techniques widely used in the analysis of economic and social data. The module is designed for students who have Maths A-Level or equivalent.

SOST10062 AND CO-REQ: ECON20071

Introduction to fundamental methods of statistics, which are the basis of techniques widely used in the analysis of economic and social data. The course is designed for students who have Maths A-Level or equivalent.

Students should be able to

i) construct and understand essential descriptive statistics for sample data (means, variances, correlations, regression coefficients),

ii) manipulate conditional and unconditional probability,

iii) obtain and manipulate probabilities from important statistical distributions (including the Binomial,Normal and Student-t),

iv) understand and use key statistical concepts,

v) construct and interpret confidence intervals for population means and proportions,

vi) carry out and interpret simple hypothesis tests of relevance in the social sciences

The module’s notes are headed as follows:

1. Introduction and Descriptive Statistics,

2. Probability and Discrete Random Variables (means and variances),

3. Continuous Random Variables (means, variances, Normal distribution),

4. Expectations and Combinations of Variables (means, variances, covariances, correlation, independence),

5. Sampling Distributions (sample mean and proportion),

6. Hypothesis Testing (sample means and proportions, large sample tests),

7. More Statistical Inference (confidence intervals, p-values)

Synchronous activities (such as Lectures or Review and Q&A sessions, and tutorials), and guided self-study

30% Online Tests (3 assessments of 10% each)

70% Final Exam.

The criteria used by Economics in the assessment of examinations and coursework can be found on the UG Intranet in your programme handbook (BSc Economics, BA(ECON)

• Exercise classes.
• Online quizzes.
• PASS groups.
• Office hours.

All students are expected to download the detailed module notes. These form the basis of the lecture and tutorial material.

Many introductory statistics books cover the material in the module. Multiple copies of the following texts are available in the Main and Precinct Centre libraries:

Newbold, Carlson and Thorne (2009), Statistics for Business and Economics ,

Wonnacott and Wonnacott (1990), Introductory Statistics for Business and Economics

For every 10 course unit credits we expect students to work for around 100 hours. This time generally includes any contact times (online or face to face, recorded and live), but also independent study, work for coursework, and group work. This amount is only a guidance and individual study time will vary