Stats 48N

Riding the data wave

We live in a "brave new world of data" : how can we make sense of all the information we are acquiring about ourselves? During each week, we will consider a different data set to be summarized with a different goal. We will review analyses of similar problems carried out in the past and explore if and how the same tools can be useful today. We will pay attention to contemporary media (newspapers, blogs, etc.) to identify settings similar to the ones we are examining and critique the displays and summaries there documented. Taking an experimental approach, we will evaluate the effectiveness of different data summaries in conveying the desired information by testing them on subsets of the enrolled students.

Meeting time: Tuesday-Thursday 8:30-9:50 on Zoom.

Following is a list of possible topics for the weekly session. As we move through the quarter entries will become more precise, reflecting the material actually worked on and including the reading assignements for the week.

  1. Introduction to the class and to the use of data.
  2. One number summary of the "center" of the data and introduction to R.
  3. Measures of dispersion and concentration
  4. Graphical displays
  5. Measuring diversity
  6. Two qualitative variable: measures of association And the Simpson's paradox.
  7. Measuring distance from independence in generic contingency tables.
  8. Dependence between two quantitative variables
  9. Two quantitative variables: regression
  10. Many quantitative variables: principal components analysis

......
......
.
Canvas Homework In the news Opportunities Links
......