Introducing Basic Statistics with R

Many years ago, Karl Pearson in 1892 said that “Statistics is the Grammar of Science”. Going by this statement, every science is incomplete without some elements of statistics. Science as used here, extends to all aspects of science – pure science, social science, art science and behavioural science.  Therefore, understanding statistics is essential to understand research in any of these sciences. In this era of BIG data, statistics is the grammar of Data Science; it is the foundation and fulcrum beneath most Data Science libraries. The goal of statistics is that discovering useful information, informing conclusion and supporting decision-making. The role of statistics in empirical decision making in every functional area of business cannot be over emphasised.

You will learn the basics of statistics in this course. You also will learn how they are calculated and how to evaluate and interpret them. We will start with discussion on methods of descriptive statistics – types of variables and how you can analyse such data and compute measures of central tendency (mean, median and mode) and dispersion (standard deviation and variance). Secondly, we shall discuss how to assess relationships between variables, and we shall introduce the concepts correlation and regression. We shall demonstrate how to use excel to calculate these statistics and summarise data. We shall also introduce how to perform data analysis using R statistical software.

Facilitator:

Dr. Jude Eze has more than 20 years experience in teaching, research, training and consulting in statistics. He has taught more than a hundred students and clients the art of statistics and assisted them acquire core statistical competencies. For several years, he has continued to offer statistical training; advice and support to some organisations and helping them make the most use of their data for evidence-based decisions. He has published in reputed peer reviewed journals.

Course Outline:

Course 1: Basics of Statistics using R Statistical package

• Data types
• Measures of central tendency
• Measures of variation
• Measures of association
• Introduction to Regression Analysis

Who should attend? This is an introductory course to Statistics and is open to everyone irrespective of area of specialisation, occupation or profession. Statistical literacy is important for everyone. Children in S1- S7 can join in courses 1 and 2 also.  

Follow-up details:

After the training, participants will be provided with information about additional courses and support available through the Baseline Careers Network.