SOCY 601: Statistics for Sociological Research I
This is the basic first course in the sociology program's graduate statistics sequence at the University of Maryland. This course introduces basic descriptive and inferential statistics, and various techniques of data analysis and their application in sociology. This course introduces you to both statistics and data analysis--they go hand in hand. The two basic objectives of statistical methods are data reduction and statistical inference. Data reduction involves the summarization of complex, large and multivariate datasets with an eye to the identification of patterns or associations. Statistical inference quantifies uncertainty about those summaries and associations, uncertainties that arise because data are subject to random variation. More practically in sociology, inferential statistics allow us to draw conclusions from data from random samples drawn from a population of interest.
The course is divided into a few sections. First we discuss basic tools for data reduction, description and analysis. Next we review some basic probability theory, enough to motivate and situate the connections between randomness, sampling, and inference about a whole from a part (i.e. inference). We then spend the rest of the course on estimation.
The course is divided into a few sections. First we discuss basic tools for data reduction, description and analysis. Next we review some basic probability theory, enough to motivate and situate the connections between randomness, sampling, and inference about a whole from a part (i.e. inference). We then spend the rest of the course on estimation.
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