Monday 4pm AM200
Lecture 1 
Tuesday 2pm O'Flaherty
Lecture Material
Web based material
Tuesday 4pm AM250
Lecture 2 
 Wednesday 12pm O' Flaherty
Tutorials
{to be confirmed
Text Books
• Custom Course Book
– Introduction to Probability and Statistics
Compiled by John Hinde & John Newell
Pearson Custom Publishing, 2004
Available from the University Bookshop
www.nuigalway.ie/maths/jn/
– Lectures notes
– Example Sheets
– Online Multiple Choice Quizzes
– Online Assessment Sheets (3 x 5%)
Course Outline
1. Introduction to Statistics
2. Collecting Data
3. Sampling Distributions
• Any introduction to Probability & Statistics text in the library,
4. Point and Interval Estimation
– Elementary Statistics: A Step by Step Approach: Bluman.
– Introduction to the Practice of Statistics: Moore and McCabe
5. Hypothesis Testing
6. Linear Modelling
1.Introduction to Statistics
Statistics IS the science of
• collecting,
What is/are Statistics?
• summarising,
• analysing and
• interpreting sets of data.
The applications of
statistics are many and
varied.
Statistics have a bad
reputation !
What Is (Are?) Statistics?
• Statistics is about the collection,
presentation, analysis and
interpretation of data
• Statistics are ….
A parameter is a numerical
characteristic of the
population.
It is a fixed number, but we
usually do not know its
value.
Some definitions
Population : the entire
group of objects about
which information is
required.
Unit: any individual member of
the population
Sample: a part or subset of the
population used to gain
information about the
population.
Sampling Frame: the list of
units from which the sample
is chosen.
Variable: a characteristic of a
unit to be measured in the
sample.
Data are the values that
variables can assume.
Example 1
Variable
Population: MA238
Unit ?
Qualitative
Quantitative
Sample ?
Sampling Frame ?
Variable ?
Nominal Ordinal
Discrete
Continuous
Course Rating
Gender
Statistics ARE numbers
derived from a
SAMPLE of data.
Eye color
Weight
Inference is the process of
making decisions about a
population based on
information contained in a
sample from that population.
The value of the statistic
changes from sample to
sample.
Population
Parameters
Inference
Sample
Sample
Statistics