B029903 - SOCIAL STATISTICS (SECS-S/05)

italian

The course provides students with the basic statistical tools needed to understand and treat data within the fields of application of human sciences, with particular attention to the educational and communications fields. With reference to these instances, the course pays particular attention to the description of collective phenomena, through the quantitative analysis of data and its representation, the understanding of the methods and results of statistical surveys.

M. Sullivan Fundamentals of Statistics, Pearson.

Knowledge and understanding skills. Students will acquire the ability to understand written texts and professional practices that include the use of statistical techniques.Ability to apply knowledge and understanding. Students will be able to effectively use the statistical techniques presented in the course within all the activities related to the duties of professional profiles of interest.Judgment autonomy. The nature and contents of the course are the most appropriate to the achievement of this goal: the phase of the construction of the data, which precedes its mere collection, is the source of several criticalities affecting the subsequent collection and processing. All the phases of the research path are analyzed within the course to enable the student to acquire competences that allow him to critically select among the different data analysis tools the ones most appropriate to the nature of the subject being studied .Communicative Skills. Students will be able to interpret but also communicate the results of their professional activity whether they are expressed in the form of research results as well as performance indicators of membership services or outputs of evaluation mechanisms. To do this they will have to acquire the essential elements of statistical language, as well as the ability to produce synthetic research reports.Learning ability. Critical reflection on the use of the methods and principles of constructing / interpreting statistical information are relevant features of the course. Within the humanities faculties, the teaching of the statistical area is considered by the students among the most prominent obstacles within their study path. Overcoming the obstacle, basing essentially on the correct use of instrumental logic in the context of the analysis of collective social phenomena, is a necessary condition for passing the examination (short-term objective) but also a premise for the development of a Greater self-confidence that represents the stimulus for further self-learning or advanced courses.

Math at secondary school level. Calculus is excluded

Traditional classroom setting (teacher up front giving a lecture/demo). Classroom exercises will be integrated into frontal lessons. Given the type of teaching, lessons will be theoretical and practical.

Use of e-learning platform Moodle where, in particular, will be upload the teaching materials.

The final exam is designed to ensure the acquisition of knowledge and skills through a written test to be carried out on IT device, with multiple choice questions and exercises (only one correct answer and at least three wrong answers). To carry out the test, it is recommended that students bring with them a charged laptop or tablet.

Quantification in social sciences. Measurement concept; Scales of measurement. The statistical survey and its phases. Unit, population, variable.Classification of variables. The statistical sources.The data matrix. Simple statistical distributions: frequency distributions. Absolute, relative, percentages. Graphic representations: circular field diagrams, ribbon and column charts,Segment diagram, histogram. Average values: fashion, median, quantile, arithmetic mean. The properties of the arithmetic mean.The concept of asymmetry. The boxplot. Variability and variability measures: the range of variation, the interquartile range, the standard deviation. The relative variability: the coefficient of variation.Statistical ratios: Introduction to bivariate statistics distributions: double entry tables, marginal distributions, conditional distributions; calculation and meaning of marginal row, column, and column percentages on the overall total. Introduction to relationships between variables (concepts of existence, intensity, direction and form).
Correlation and regression.
Introduction to Sampling.
On all subjects of the course, practical exercises will be carried out on concrete cases.