MATH 111-02, Introduction to Statistics, Spring 2011

Abstract

Statistics is an exciting, dynamic, and intrinsically interdisciplinary science. Modern statistics is widely employed in government, business, and the natural and social sciences. The work of statisticians powers search engines like Google, has proven critical to the exploration of the human genome, and is used by hedge fund managers to detect risk-free trading strategies that have a very high probability of yielding a profit for their clients. Computers are transforming the field at a breathtaking pace. This semester, our approach to the two main tasks of statistical inference – constructing confidence intervals and executing hypothesis tests – will be motivated by simulations and visualizations in a software environment. These kinds of approaches are quickly coming to shape the way statistical analysis will be carried out in years to come. Because hard drive space is becoming much cheaper (i.e., it is easy to collect and store vast quantities of data) and processing speeds are becoming much faster (i.e., it is easy to do more things with data than ever before), the world of tomorrow will be dominated by the computer-driven data analysis we will undertake this semester.