Statistical Methods For Economics 2020
Statistical Methods For Economics 2020
Statistical Methods For Economics 2020
Minutes of Meeting
Attended by:
Course Description
The course teaches students the basics of probability theory and statistical inference. It sets a
necessary foundation for the econometrics courses within the Honours programme. The
familiarity with probability theory will also be valuable for courses in advanced
microeconomic theory.
Unit 1
Introduction and overview, The distinction between populations and samples and between
population parameters and sample statistics
Devore: Ch 1.1
Unit 2
Elementary probability theory Sample spaces and events; probability axioms and properties;
counting techniques; conditional probability and Bayes’ rule; independence
Devore: Ch 2
Unit 3
Random variables and probability distributions Defining random variables; probability
distributions; expected values and functions of random variables; properties of commonly used
discrete and continuous distributions (uniform, binomial, exponential, Poisson, hypergeometric
and Normal random variables)
Devore: Ch3 (except Negative Binomial Distribution), Ch 4.1-4.3 and pgs. 165-166
Unit 4
Random sampling and jointly distributed random variables Density and distribution functions
for jointly distributed random variables; computing expected values of jointly distributed
random variables; covariance and correlation coefficients
Unit 5
Point and interval estimation, estimation of population parameters using methods of moments
and maximum likelihood procedures; properties of estimators; confidence intervals for
population parameters
Unit 6
Hypothesis testing Defining statistical hypotheses; distributions of test statistics; testing
hypotheses related to population parameters; Type I and Type II errors; power of a test; tests
for comparing parameters from two samples
References
1. Devore, J. (2012). Probability and statistics for engineers, 8th ed. Cengage Learning.
2. Larsen, R., Marx, M. (2011). An introduction to mathematical statistics and its applications.
Prentice Hall.
3. Miller, I., Miller, M. (2017). J. Freund’s mathematical statistics with applications, 8th ed.
Pearson.
Assessment:
This course carries 100 marks of which the end semester examination is 75 marks and internal
assessment is worth 25 marks as per the following norms: Two class tests/assignment of 10
marks each and 5 marks for attendance.