MTH211A: Theory of Statistics

Course policy:

See the first course handout.

Prerequisite:

MSO201A or MSO205A.

What is the idea of this course?

The basic idea of this course is to learn to infer about an underlying truth from the data.

Example: Salt experiment

“During the communal riots in Delhi in 1947, many people from a minority community took refuge in Red Fort. The government had no count of the number of refugees, and contractors responsible to feed them charged high amounts. A team from the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) solved the problem. They felt that the contractors would have inflated the amount of rice and pulses, but had no reason to do so with salt as it was cheap. So, they divided the quantities of rice, pulses and salt used per day to feed all the refugees (according to the contractors) by the respective per capita requirements of these commodities, and got three estimates of the number of refugees. The estimate obtained by salt was the smallest and estimate from the rice was the largest – rice being the most expensive one, its quantity was probably exaggerated. They proposed the quantity obtained from salt as an estimate of the number of refugees. The method was verified as feasible in the case of the refugees at the site of Humayun’s Tomb.”

source: https://www.hindustantimes.com

What are the essential tools?

1) Data collection

• Primary data

  • Census

  • Sampling

    • Methods of sampling

• Secondary data

2) Summarizing

• Data representation

• Visualization

• Summary statistics

3) Modelling the data

4) Inference

• Point estimation

• Interval estimation

• Hypothesis testing

• Prediction and forecasting