MT 140 - Elementary Inferential Statistics

Credit Hours: 4

This four-credit course includes concepts and computer skills which are valuable in a variety of life and work applications, as well as in more advanced coursework. Consistent with the American Statistical Association’s Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE), the course learning outcomes center around providing students with a firm conceptual understanding that enables them to use statistical tools intelligently and to be sophisticated consumers of information from studies whose conclusions are based on data. The mathematics concepts are presented in a context that is relevant and meaningful to students. Technology is used to aid computation so that time can be focused on deepening students’ conceptual understanding of the mathematic topics.

Course Outcomes
Upon completion of this course, the student will be able to:

define basic statistical terms;
use key characteristics of a distribution to quantify the shape, center, and spread of the distribution;
compute probabilities and apply the concepts of probability to confidence intervals and hypothesis tests;
use a table, MINITAB/similar technology, and the binomial probability density function to compute expected values and probabilities associated with binomial experiments;
use a table of areas, and MINITAB/similar technology to compute relative frequencies and percentages associated with a continuous random variable with a normal distribution;
use hypothesis tests to weigh inferences concerning means and proportions;
use a confidence interval to estimate and measure the accuracy of means and proportions; and
use a scatter plot of bivariate data to visualize the relationship between variables, use the correlation coefficient to measure the strength and direction of the relationship, and compute and use functions (where appropriate) to describe a linear and non-linear relationship between the variables and make predictions.

Prerequisites: MT 003 or appropriate college equivalent and/or appropriate mathematics level code
F/S (C,N,S)