3 credits
Spring 2026 Lecture Lower Division
This course is a self-contained introduction to statistics with economic applications. The goals of this course are to help students develop a working knowledge of data production and interpretation in an economics context, recognize the fundamental interconnectedness of economics and data, and introduce the basic concepts in statistics needed for further study of econometrics. Topics include the organization, analysis, and interpretation of data; descriptive statistics; probability theory; sampling distributions; inference and hypothesis testing; and simple linear regression analysis. The approach of the class includes both learning the concepts behind basic statistics and also how to apply these concepts to make data-informed, real-world economic decisions. Students will become familiar with the common statistical techniques and databases for analyzing data by using both hand calculations and STATA to analyze data.
Learning Outcomes1Describe and analyze statistical data in an economics context.
2Build probability models of continuous and discrete random variables to analyze economic and business situations.
3Estimate the value of an unknown population parameter and assess the reliability of the estimate using confidence intervals as well as hypothesis testing.
4Identify the advantages as well as the limitations of statistics in the process of making real-world business and economic decisions.
5Use STATA to compute probability models and interpret the results of the statistical analysis to draw conclusions from economic and business data.
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