00914 - Statistics (A-L)

Learning outcomes

Understanding statistics is essential to understand research in the social and behavioral sciences. In this course you will learn the basics of statistics both in Descriptive and Inferential field.

The student must obtain the basic ability of carrying out quantitative Statistical analyzes, in calculate and evaluate them.

Course contents

The courses splits in three parts:

• In the first part of the course we will discuss methods of descriptive statistics. You will learn what cases and variables are and how you can compute measures of central tendency (mean, median and mode) and dispersion (standard deviation and variance). We will also see index (statistics). In the next part, we discuss how to assess relationships between variables, and we introduce the concepts of correlation and regression, indeces of indipendence between categorial variabiles.

• The second part of the course is concerned with the basics of probability: calculating probabilities, probability distributions (discrete distributions: Uniform, Bernoulli, Binomial) and countinuos distributions (Standard Normal distribution), and sampling distributions. You need to know about these things in order to understand how inferential statistics work.
  
  
• The latest part of the course consists of an introduction to methods of inferential statistics - methods that help us decide whether the patterns we see in our data are strong enough to draw conclusions about the underlying population we are interested in. We will discuss confidence intervals and significance tests of principal statistics as well as inference in the linear model.

Readings/Bibliography

LUISA STRACQUALURSI, Elementi di Statistica, Seconda edizione, self publishing amazon, 2023, ebook o cartaceo.

LUISA STRACQUALURSI, Test di Statistica a risposta multipla, Seconda edizione, self publishing amazon, 2023, ebook o cartaceo.

SIMONE BORRA e AGOSTINO DI CIACCIO, Statistica, metodologia per le scienze economiche e sociali, McGraw-Hill, Milano, 2004.

Note: the course is in Italian language, so the reference texts are in Italian too. It is not binding to use these books for the understanding of the course. I displayed them only as an indication and for further in-dept information.

Teaching methods

This course applies Digital Learning techniques, i.e.:


- interactive lessons: all the main topics will be explained with interactive presentations with wooclap
- videos and slides of the main topics: In panopto you will find the link to the summary videos of the main topics covered in class with all the steps and explanations, which you can view at your leisure, while all the slides of the lessons can be downloaded from virtuale platform;
- pre-exam self-assessment quizzes: before each partial and total test, quizzes are scheduled, with relative solutions and the main feedback. Students will be able to attempt these quizzes several times (since with each new attempt the system will generate new questions) this will allow them to self-evaluate their progress.

The course includes:

- 60 hours of face to face lessons.

- 12 hours of further tutorial exercises

- 3 partial exams during the course

Assessment methods

There are 3 tests during the Statistics course, plus a compulsory final exam. Otherwise, is possible to do only one full test in the ordinary examination session. (See provisions of the educational organization for the SID degree course).

To pass the exam the student score has to be not less then 18/30 in the full examination and in average partial tests. In this latest case he/she must pass also the compulsory final exam.

Please, see the detailed exam regulations on VIRTUALE platform.

Teaching tools

This course applies Digital Learning techniques. Interactive wooclap lessons, videos will be available with a detailed explanation of the main topics (on PANOPTO platform), as well as multiple choice self-assessment tests for exams preparation, in addition to slides of the topics (on VIRTUAL platform). The support of a tutor is also foreseen who, that will help students in learning the main topics of the course using Microsoft Teams tool.

Office hours

See the website of Luisa Stracqualursi