Professor: Michael Wallace | Term: Fall 2025
Lecture 1
The 4 assignments in this course (which are not graded) give opportunity to analyze a real-world dataset (Stanford Open Policing Project) using R.
Question
Why study stats?
- To be a statistician.
- Problem solving: This reminds me of a puzzle.
- Variety: Theory, application, anything in between.
- Utility: Useful to almost everyone.
- Coolness: You will be cool at parties.
- To be a user of statistics.
- Science: Want to know if you’ve done an experiment properly? Will need statistics.
- Industry: Does our new product work better? Why are we losing customers?
- Spare time: Can I play the stock market?
- Being informed on issues: Should guns be regulated?
- To improve critical, analytical, and communication skills.
- Learn to ask the right questions.
- Understand the importance of precision, in words and measurements.
Key features of STAT231:
- The language of statistics
- Understanding what data can and can’t tell us
- Methods of estimation and analaysis
- Principles over proofs (this is a
STATnot aMATHcourse)