791-206 Statistical Methods I

Credit Points

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Information Technology II.

Semester

Contact

Subject Description

The objective of this subject is to enable students to:

• gain a comprehensive appreciation to the role of statistics in scientific inquiry;
• develop an understanding of the concepts, methods and procedures employed in descriptive statistics;
• explain probability and probability distributions - characteristics and their applications;
• use statistical software package for data tabulations, description and analysis.

The content includes: Role of statistics in scientific inquiry; statistical inference, characterisation of data, quantitative and qualitative observations, nominal, ordinal and ratio scales. Collection, organisation and presentation of data: descriptive statistics - measures of location and variation, use of standard error and co-efficient of variation for interpretation of data. Symmetrical and asymmetrical distributions - measures of skewness. Probability and probability distributions: Binomial and normal distributions - characteristics and applications, standard normal - curve - Z-test, confidence limits and confidence interval. Hypothesis testing: concepts and principles - introduction of agricultural experimental methods.

Assessment

Assignments (20%) and two and a half hour examination (80%)