Statistics for Decision Making

This unit of study will introduce students to data analysis and statistical techniques used in the workplace and community to help make sense of the vast amounts of data collected in all fields. It will include displaying and describing data, sampling and population distributions, probability and combinatorics and inferential statistics and their use to make decisions. This is an introductory unit in a mathematics major or minor unit set. It has been designed to be particularly useful for pre-service teachers, and students studying science.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, students will be able to:

1. Articulate data collection methods, types of variables, types of data;
2. Present data using graphical and numerical methods;
3. Conduct elementary-level exploratory data analysis, to gain in particular, basic knowledge from real life data using basic statistical tools;
4. Explain the concepts of probability and combinatorics and calculate probability for various continuous and discrete variables;
5. Make various statistical inferences using Estimation and Hypothesis Testing.