EC10910 - STATISTICS FOR ECONOMISTS

Module Identifier

EC10910

Module Title

STATISTICS FOR ECONOMISTS

Academic Year

2003/2004

Co-ordinator

Mr Alan Jones

Semester

Semester 2

Other staff

Mr Alan Jones, Glenda Roberts

Mutually Exclusive

AC10410

Course delivery

Lecture

22 Hours

Seminars / Tutorials

6 Hours

Assessment

Assessment Type	Assessment Length/Details	Proportion
Semester Exam	1.5 Hours	80%
Semester Assessment		20%

Learning outcomes

On completion of the module the students will:

Know how to display data in figures such as pie-charts, bar charts, and histograms.
Understand the purpose of measures of central tendency, dispersion, and association and be able to calculate them.
Understand the concept of a probability distribution and have a basic understanding of the meaning and use of the following distributions: normal, t, F, chi-squared;
Know the meaning of a sample and be able to calculate and draw inferences from sample statistics.
Have an understanding of time-series data.
Understand the principles of estimation: bias and efficiency
Be able to produce and test hypotheses.
Understand the idea of correlation.
Be able to interpret output from spreadsheets and other computer packages.

Brief description

Statistical analysis is an important part of the economist's toolkit and this module looks at introductory ideas. No previous knowledge of the subject is assumed.

Aims

To give students an introduction to descriptive and inferential statistics and to help them understand the purpose and meaning of statistics. The module is designed to make students familiar with the various statistics used in economics and will give them a preliminary introduction to statistical computer programs including spreadsheets.

Content

DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS. Diagrammatic representations of data. Averaging. Measuring spread. Weighted averages.
PROBABILITY. Basic ideas. Addition and multiplication rules. Tree diagrams. Success/Fail experiments. Binomial distributions. Normal distribution.
STATISTICAL SIGNIFICANCE. Idea of significance. Tests concerning means. Tests concerning variance. Comparisons. Goodness of fit; contingency tables.
RELATIONSHIPS. Scatter diagrams, correlation and lines of best fit. Dependent and independent variables. Variation over time.

Reading Lists

Books
McClave, Benson and Sincich (1998) Statistics for Business and Economics 7th Ed. Prentice-Hall 0138402329
M Barrow (2001) Statistics for economics, accounting and business studies 3rd Ed. Prentice Hall 0273646613
Perry R Hinton (1995) Statistics explained : a guide for social science students Routledge 0415102863
G Bancroft and M Fletcher (1998) Improve your maths! : a refresher course Addison-Wesley 0201331306

Notes

This module is at CQFW Level 4