Foundations of Statistics

Unit Code:LCR102

Credit Points	Duration	Contact Hours	Campus	Prerequisite	Corequisite
12.5 Credit Points	12 week semester (On campus) 13 week study perid (Online)	36 hours over the teaching period (normally 3 hours per week)	Lilydale, Online, Singapore	Nil	Nil

Credit Points

Duration

Contact Hours

Campus

Prerequisite

Corequisite

12.5 Credit Points

12 week semester (On campus)
13 week study perid (Online)

36 hours over the teaching period (normally 3 hours per week)

Lilydale, Online, Singapore

Nil

Related Course/s:

Formerly known as LCR100 Statistics and Research Methods / STA15 Statistics and Research Methods (Open Universities Australia)

Co-badged with STA102 Foundations of Statistics (Online)

This is a prescribed unit of study in the Business Major/s and Social Science Major/s. It may also be undertaken as a unit of study in any other Swinburne degree program, subject to the prerequisite and degree requirements.

Aims & Objectives:

The aim of Foundations of Statistics is to develop the capacity to carry out independent statistical investigation, together with an awareness of the assumptions and limitations involved with the generalisation of the results of such investigations. Students are expected to summarise data, identify research questions, determine and identify appropriate research designs, analyse the data using the statistical package SPSS for Windows and interpret the results in a report writing format.

Teaching Methods:

This unit will be taught in a variety of modes including face to face, online, distance and blended modes. Delivery of this unit may be through a mixture of lectures, tutorials, laboratories, seminars and online.

Assessment:

Workbooks 15-25%
Tests 15-25%
Examination 50-65%

Generic Skills Outcomes:

Learners bring a diverse wealth of experiences and graduate with individual understandings, abilities and attitudes. Within this context it is the intent of this unit that students will begin to develop the following key generic skills:
• analysis skills, problem solving skills, communications skills
• ability to tackle unfamiliar problems
• ability to work independently

Content:

• Critical thinking in statistics
• Reporting information about a single variable
• The theory behind significance testing
• Research design
• Inferential Statistics – reporting on the relationship between pairs of variables (t-tests, Pearson’s correlation and the chi-square statistic)

Textbooks:

Francis, G., 2010 Foundations of Statistics, Swinburne University of Technology.

References:

Francis, G. (2007), Introduction to SPSS for Windows, 5th edn., Pearson Education Australia, Frenchs Forest.

Moore, D. (2000), The basic practice of statistics, 2nd edn, Freeman, New York.

Peck, R., Olsen, C., Devore, J. (2005), Introduction to statistics and data analysis, 2nd edn, Thomson Brooks/Cole, Belmont.

Utts, J. (2005), Seeing through statistics, 3rd edn, Thomson Brooks/Cole, California.