Statistics I
(Bachelor, 2nd semester, summer term (SS))
What is statistics?
- A fruit seller at the weekly market claims that his apples weigh 100 grams. After buying 10 from him, you find that the apples weigh only 99 grams on average? Was the fruit seller lying?
- You bought an anti-wrinkle cream. On the package it says: "It helps in 88%" and "Tested on 17 women." How are you supposed to understand that?
- You work as a student assistant in a library. Your boss assigns you to check the library stamp in all 1,000,000 books. How many books would you only have to look at to allow for a maximum error of 5%?
- Your friends include 3 students with a monthly net income of 500 euros and an oligarch with a monthly net income of 50,000 euros. Would that mean that you earn an average of 10,400 euros ([500 + 500 + 500 + 50,000]/5)?
- The movie "Twilight" could be rated in a ranking from 1 (very bad) to 10 (very good) (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1099212/). The points were given as follows: 6.9% men gave 10 points, 19.7% only one point (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1099212/ratings-male); 27.2% of women gave 10 points, and 10.0% only one point (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1099212/ratings-female). Who is the target audience for the film?
The course will help you answer such questions. You will learn simple statistical survey methods. You will get an introduction to simple measures of location and scatter. You will be able to answer questions at the end of the semester such as: Who shoots better with a bow: orc or elf? Using elementary probability theory and combinatorics, you will learn whether it pays to play the lottery. Classical distribution models help you to estimate the number of goals and the time between two goals in soccer.
News
Current information as well as the course material can be found on OPAL .
The exercises start in the first week of lectures.
Written exam
Permitted aids (in attendance): printed formulary of the chair without own comments (please bring your own), non-programmable calculator
Topics
- Introduction to descriptive statistics
- Empirical distributions
- Measures of dispersion and location
- Correlation
- Combinatorics
- Probability of events
- Conditional probability, theorem of total probability, theorem of Bayes
- Introduction to discrete and continuous distributions
- Properties of expected value and variance
- Discrete distributions (Binomial, Hypergeometric, Poisson, Geometric)
- Continuous distributions (Equal, Exponential, Normal, etc.)
- Review of the semester
Literature
- Bamberg, G. and F. Baur: Statistics (18th ed.). Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich, 2017.
- Bamberg, G., Baur, F., and M. Krapp Statistics workbook: exercises - case studies - solutions (10th edition), Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich, 2017.
- Berenson, M., Levine, D., and Krehbiel, T.: Basic Business Statistics. Thomson, London, 2011.
- Fahrmeir, L., Künstler, R., Pigeot, I. and G.Tutz: Statistics. Springer, Berlin, 2010.
- Keller, G.: Managerial Statistics. South-Western, Mason, 2011.