STATISTICS

This course is one of the core educational activities of the Business Administration and Management degree program that allows students to acquire the knowledge and understating of the main statistical concepts used in management disciplines.
The aim of the course is to provide the basic knowledge of descriptive and inferential statistics and develop skills that allow the students to structure and analyze data in problems characterized by uncertainty such as in economics, finance, quality control and marketing.

At the end of the course, students are expected to have acquired the basic knowledge of statistics to develop descriptive and inferential analyses of business phenomena through tools and statistical methods suitable for the analysis, as for example graphics and numerical synthesis, punctual or interval estimates, hypothesis tests. In particular, students should:
1. Knowledge and understanding
- know the terminology and basic concepts of descriptive and inferential statistics for business phenomena;
- understand the strengths and limitations of the statistical approaches used to analyze business phenomena.
2. Ability to apply knowledge and understanding
- know how to determine the best statistical methods for the analysis of real phenomena;
- understand the main aspects of the descriptive and inferential statistical analyses;
3. Making judgements
- be able to critically assess under which circumstances the analyses are reliable;
- be able to assess the goodness of the achieved results.
4. (Lifelong) learning skills
- be able to critically consult reference books and online material in the fields of statistics and analysis of data for business phenomena.

Students must have passed the course Mathematics [ET2018] - this is compulsory to be allowed to sit the Statistics exam.
The topics presented in the course Risk and Uncertainty [ET2031] form the basis for many of the statistical approaches presented in the course, so students are strongly encouraged to at least have attended the Risk and Uncertainty classes before taking the Statistics exam.

The course introduces basic concepts of descriptive and inferential statistic, recalling basic probability concepts when needed to derive statistical quantities. In particular, the following topics are discussed:

1. Descriptive statistics and exploratory analysis for univariate and bivariate data.
2. Random Sampling and Distributions of Sampling Statistics.
3. Point and interval estimation
4. Statistical hypothesis testing for one sample and two samples.

Ross, Sheldon M. (2010) Introductory statistics (3rd ed.)

Written examination with exercises similar in style to those done in class and present in the book. The exam will be composed of two types of questions: some basic ones and more complex ones which aim at verifying the ability of the student to interpret and appraise a statistical analysis. The exam will be written and consists of multiple choice questions and open questions with a duration of approximately 90 minutes.

Concerning the marks the following guidelines will apply

A. marks in the range 18-22:
- sufficient knowledge and the ability to apply the topics of the course;
B. marks in the range 23-26:
- fair knowledge and the ability to apply the topics of the course;
C. marks in the range 27-30:
- good or very good knowledge and the ability to apply the topics of the course;
D. honours will be given when the degree of knowledge and the ability to apply the topics of the course will be excellent.

Standard blackboard teaching. Additional material for the course posted onto Moodle.

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