PAM 2101 - Statistics for Policy Analysis and Management Majors

Fall. 4 credits. Letter grades only.

Enrollment limited to: PAM majors.

M. Hall.

The primary intent is to prepare students to successfully complete PAM 3100 Multivariate Regression. Topics include data presentation and descriptive statistics, summation operator, properties of linear functions, quadratic functions, logarithmic functions, random variables and their probability distributions, joint and conditional distributions, expected value, conditional expectation, statistical sampling and inference, interval estimation and confidence intervals, hypothesis testing using t and F distributions, and an introduction to bivariate regression analysis. The course uses Excel initially to become familiar with data analysis, and then moves on to Stata (a powerful statistical analysis computer program).

Outcome 1: Employ basic numeric and visualization tools to describe data.

Outcome 2: Apply inferential statistical analysis to policy-relevant research questions.

Outcome 3: Conduct statistical evaluations of US census data in computing environment.

Outcome 4: Critique methodological approaches to social scientific research.