Elementary Probability and Statistics

3 units

An elementary introduction to statistical concepts, reasoning and data analysis. Topics include statistical summaries and graphical presentations of data, discrete and continuous random variables, the logic of statistical inference, design of research studies, point and interval estimation, hypothesis testing, and linear regression. Students will learn a critical approach to reading statistical analyses reported in the media, and how to correctly interpret the outputs of common statistical routines for fitting models to data and testing hypotheses. A major objective of the course is to gain familiarity with basic R commands to implement common data analysis procedures. Students intending to pursue a major or minor in statistics or wishing to take 4000 level or above statistics courses should instead take SDS 3020 or SDS 3030.