Advanced statistics (AS) course at PhD program in Management of Mountain Environment

Warning: information for the course valid until September 2011

Lecturer: Dr. Paolo Coletti

Email: Paolo.Colettiunibz.it
Website: www.paolocoletti.it/advancedstatistics

Course

Course presentation form A.Y. 2010/11

Prerequisites

In order to correctly follow this course each student is required previous knowledge on these topics:

• English listening, reading and writing.
• Mathematics: algebra, calculus (derivatives, all derivatives calculation, partial derivatives, functions, integrals, basic integration techniques).
• Statistics: descriptive statistics (average, median, variance, histogram, scatterplot, covariance, correlation, skewness, kurtosis), random variables (expected value, variance, cumulative distribution), discrete random variables (Bernoulli, binomial), continuous random variables (uniform distribution, normal distribution, central limit theorem, approximating binomial distribution with normal distribution).
• Computer knowledge: basic Windows, file handling (move, delete, rename, copy files and directories), data organization program (Microsoft Excel or OpenCalc or Microsoft Access).

If you have severe statistics' gaps, you must absolutely and urgently fill them. A good very basic book is Schaum's Outline Statistics and the topics that you need to study (including the related exercises!) are:

• Chapter 1: variables, graphs
• Chapter 2: raw data, frequency distributions, class intervals, histograms, frequencies, cumulative frequencies, frequencies curves and types
• Chapter 3: index and subscript, summation, averages, mean, median, mode, empirical relations
• Chapter 4: dispersion, range, standard deviation, variance
• Chapter 5: skewness, kurtosis
• Chapter 6: probability
• Chapter 7: binomial distribution, normal distribution, relation between normal and binomial
• Chapter 14: linear correlation, measures of correlation

Course content

• Statistical tests: this section includes the theory of statistical tests and a complete list of the most common statistical tests that are used in economical or political statistical researches
• Regression models: this section repeats the regression concepts of basic statistics and extends the models to more complicated cases
• SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) (also called PASW Predictive Analytic SoftWare) is a statistical program which will be used during the course

Organization

Prof. Coletti is in charge of theory, examples and practical exercises with SPSS. Students are required to have SPSS version 18 installed on their notebooks.

Books

• Advanced Statistics handout
• A. Field, Discovering Statistics Using SPSS, ISBN 978-1847879073
• J.T. McClave, P.G. Benson, T. Sincich, Statistics for business and economics, ISBN 0130466417
• G.K. Kanji, 100 statistical tests, ISBN 0761961518
• M.R. Spiegel, L.J. Stephens, Schaum's Outline Statistics, ISBN 0070602816
• M.R. Spiegel, D. Difranco, Statistics, ISBN 978-0078439902
• Videos of SPSS (from Advanced Computer Skills course at School of Economics)

Exam

Exam consists of an entire practical research on your notebook. Exam is entirely open books and with Internet access, but you are not allowed to use any communication program such as email o message systems.

or alternatively

exam consists of practical research on data that you have gathered on your own. Research is made at home and submitted to prof. Coletti via email. In this case:

• data must be different from those of the other students. You may use any data from the WWW if you prefer not using your own data;
• research may not be copied nor partially copied from other researches (unless published with your name);
• research must use as many statistical tools learnt during the course as possible;
• the SPSS data file and a technical report must be submitted to prof. Coletti via email;
• the technical report is not a scientific article, but a more detailed and verbose explanation of your statistical results. You do not need to put any abstract, introduction, conclusion, justifications, references;
• the technical report contains: a quick overview of the problem and the data structure, basic descriptive statistics with graphs, tests to check possible relations and regression models always with prerequisites' discussion, clear hypotheses, statistics, significance, results. You do not need to explain the theory behind each tool;
• grade will not depend on English usage (but it should be comprehensible) nor on article structure (but the problem should be comprehensible) nor on results' quality. Grade will depend on the correct usage of tests and regression models and on the full explanation of the situation in which they are used and their results.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Where can I get Office or SPSS?
A: We will install SPSS 18 on your notebook during the first lesson. To get Office 2007 and SPSS later you should open a ticket on https://support.unibz.it and fix an appointment with the network administrators: they will give you the installation disks and you have the right to install these programs on your notebook.

Q: How can I have Windows, Office, SPSS in English?
A: For Windows Vista, if you have installed the university version Control Panel -> Click, Language and Region -> Change Display Language. If you instead have your own version, probably you have a single language version and you may not change the language.
For Office, if you have installed the university version, in the Start -> All Programs -> Microsoft Office -> Microsoft Office Tools -> Microsoft Office 2007 Language Settings. If you instead have your own version, depending on the version you may or may not have this tool.
For SPSS 18 you can change the language inside the program Edit -> Options -> General.

Q: May I come to your office hour of another subject? Can we fix an appointment?
A: Yes, you may come to any of my office hours: you find the list of other subjects' hours, which are not in your timetable, in my timetable http://www.paolocoletti.it/timetable, but obviously students of the right subject have priority. I am sorry but I do not fix appointments, usually waiting time for my office is very short. Pay attention to my timetable since there are periods without lessons and exams, in which I can not be at university and you cannot meet me: in this case, write to me via email.

Q: Will the exam be "open books"?
A: Yes, exam is entirely open books and with Internet access, but you are not allowed to use any communication program such as email or message systems.

Resources

Data files used in class.

Other exercises used in class.

Species (reduced) SPSS file.

Example exercises

Warning: these exercises are taken from other courses. Therefore they might be used to test your knowledge but they are not an exam prototype for this course. Check above how the exam for this course will be.

Questions marked in red have not been explained in class but should be easily done anyway. Questions stricken out have not been done in class and are not so easy to be done (Statistics B exercises require table and Advanced Computer Skills exercises require knowledge on SPSS functions and commands).

This page is maintained by Paolo Coletti.

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