FREC 408
COURSE OVERVIEW

 
Statistics are a important part of both physical and social science research.  They enable us to examine and test important research questions concerning individual variables and relationships among a set of variables.  The focus of this course is on understanding the basics of statistics.  I would like you to gain an appreciation for how descriptive and inferential statistics are used in everyday life and in research; how to analyze a set of data; and how to critique the use of statistics by others. 

FREC 408 is designed to give the students an appreciation and understanding of the use of descriptive and inferential statistics in the agricultural sciences.  This course assumes that the students have not had any prior exposure to statistics.    This course will be very much a hands on course.  We are going to get down and dirty with the data.  I firmly believe in looking at univariate statistics, graphing and plotting data, and in students interpreting the results.  We will be using Microsoft Excel for calculations, but I will also require some hand calculations (on small data sets).  I will also introduce other software packages such as SAS. 
 
Course Objectives:
  1. Understand the use of statistics in analyzing data
  2. Differentiate the descriptive versus inferential nature of statistics
  3. Feel comfortable in taking a set of data and understanding how it might be described and analyzed using various statistical techniques
  4. Gain an appreciation of the use of statistics in the research process
  5. Have the ability to critical look at statistical analysis and objectively assess the validity of the analysis

Techniques Covered
  1. Descriptive statistics
  2. Basic Probability Theory
  3. Inferences Using Means and Proportions for Single Samples
  4. Inferences Using Means and Proportions for Two Samples
  5. Analysis of Variance
  6. Correlation
  7. Bivariate Regression
  8. Multivariate Regression
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