Foundational Level Course
Statistics for Data Science I
The students will be introduced to large datasets. Using this data, the students will be introduced to various insights one can glean from the data. Basic concepts of probability also will be introduced during the course leading to a discussion on Random variables.
by Usha Mohan
Course ID: BSCMA1002
Course Credits: 4
Course Type: Foundational
Prerequisites: None
What you’ll learnVIEW COURSE VIDEOS
Course structure & Assessments
12 weeks of coursework, weekly online assignments, 2 in-person invigilated quizzes, 1 in-person invigilated end term exam. For details of standard course structure and assessments, visit Academics page.
| WEEK 1 | Introduction and type of data, Types of data, Descriptive and Inferential statistics, Scales of measurement |
| WEEK 2 | Describing categorical data Frequency distribution of categorical data, Best practices for graphing categorical data, Mode and median for categorical variable |
| WEEK 3 | Describing numerical data Frequency tables for numerical data, Measures of central tendency - Mean, median and mode, Quartiles and percentiles, Measures of dispersion - Range, variance, standard deviation and IQR, Five number summary |
| WEEK 4 | Association between two variables - Association between two categorical variables - Using relative frequencies in contingency tables, Association between two numerical variables - Scatterplot, covariance, Pearson correlation coefficient, Point bi-serial correlation coefficient |
| WEEK 5 | Basic principles of counting and factorial concepts - Addition rule of counting, Multiplication rule of counting, Factorials |
| WEEK 6 | Permutations and combinations |
| WEEK 7 | Probability Basic definitions of probability, Events, Properties of probability |
| WEEK 8 | Conditional probability - Multiplication rule, Independence, Law of total probability, Bayes’ theorem |
| WEEK 9 | Random Variables - Random experiment, sample space and random variable, Discrete and continuous random variable, Probability mass function, Cumulative density function |
| WEEK 10 | Expectation and Variance - Expectation of a discrete random variable, Variance and standard deviation of a discrete random variable |
| WEEK 11 | Binomial and poisson random variables - Bernoulli trials, Independent and identically distributed random variable, Binomial random variable, Expectation and variance of abinomial random variable, Poisson distribution |
| WEEK 12 | Introduction to continous random variables - Area under the curve, Properties of pdf, Uniform distribution, Exponential distribution |
Prescribed Books
The following are the suggested books for the course:
Introductory Statistics (10th Edition) - ISBN 9780321989178, by Neil A. Weiss published by Pearson
Introductory Statistics (4th Edition) - by Sheldon M. Ross
About the Instructors
Usha Mohan holds a Ph.D. from Indian Statistical Institute. She has worked as a researcher in ISB Hyderabad and Lecturer at University of Hyderabad prior to joining IIT Madras. She offers courses in Data analytics, Operations research, and Supply chain management to under graduate, post graduate and doctoral students. In addition, she conducts training in Optimization methods and Data Analytics for industry professionals. Her research interests include developing quantitative models in operations management and combinatorial optimization.