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Statistical Methods for Economics

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Course Type Course Code No. Of Credits
Discipline Core NSUSIEC104 4

Course Coordinator and Team:                  SES Faculty

Email of course coordinator:                       pcbabed@aud.ac.in  

Pre-requisites:                                               No

Course Description

This is an introductory course in statistics that introduces students to exploratory statistics and statistical inference as well as the use of statistical computing systems.

Course Objectives:

  • To develop the practical skills of data exploration and visualization.
  • To introduce the basic ideas of probability theory used in statistics and econometrics as well as in economic theory.
  • To introduce students to the conceptual foundations of statistical estimation and inference.  
  • To develop basic skills in mathematically analyzing statistical procedures using tools from probability theory.

Course Outcomes: 

  • Students should be able to use standard statistical software to interactively explore data sets and to identify and present their salient features.
  • Students should be familiar with basic concepts from probability theory and be able to use them in calculations.
  • Students should be able to carry out basic estimation and inference tasks and report and interpret results in a way that shows an appreciation of the concepts involved.  
  • Students should be aware of common pitfalls in the use and interpretation of statistical methods and be able to identify misuse of statistics in popular media as well as in published literature.

Brief description of the modules

The course has three main themes: data exploration and visualization, probability theory and statistical inference to be covered in the following order:

  • Data and Methods of Describing Data: Where, why and how data are collected and organized; Graphs, charts, and tables; Describing data using numerical measures (means, quantiles; variance and other measures of spread.
  • Elementary Probability Theory: Concept of Probability, addition and multiplication theorems of probability, Bayes' Theorem.
  • Theoretical Frequency Distributions: Concept of random variable, binomial distribution, Normal distribution.             
  • Correlation and Simple Regression Analysis: Correlation and causation, methods of studying correlation, fitting a regression line by the method of least squares, measuring the fit of the line.                                                    
  • Sampling and Sampling Distribution: Sampling Methods, sampling distribution of sample means.                              
  • Estimation and Testing of Hypothesis: Point Estimation, interval estimation, meaning of hypothesis tests, type I and type II errors.

Assessment Plan 

S.No

Assessment

Weightage

1

Class Test

30%

2

Assignment

30%

3

End Term

40%

References

  • Moore, D.S, McCabe G. P. and Craig, B.A. (2017). Introduction to the Practice of Statistics, 9th ed., W.H. Freeman.
  • Miller, I. and Miller, M. (2013). John E. Freund’s Mathematical Statistics With Applications, Pearson Education.

 

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