UMass Boston

Course Overview

Description

The ability to read and understand statistics is important for many professions. Issues concerning the environment, housing, education, health, jobs, land use, revenue generation, organizational structures, transportation, and many others require understanding the logic and results of quantitative analyses. Planners, analysts, and researchers collect and use information to examine societal problems. Individuals concerned with planning and policy decisions rely on statistics to formulate agendas and make decisions. Organized quantitative information is central to understanding a community and to measuring the impact of community health and development strategies. Whether you choose to work in government, nonprofit organizations, business, or as a policy analyst, you will benefit from a good understanding of statistical analyses. This course builds upon knowledge of descriptive and inferential statistics and probability theory, and the application of statistics in social scientific research. This course has two main foci. The statistical focus includes understanding descriptive and inferential statistical concepts and the interpretation of statistical results. The second is applied quantitative data management and analysis in SPSS, a tool for the statistical analysis of data. It allows researchers to perform a wide variety of statistical procedures. A primary goal of the course is to provide students with a basic knowledge of the program in order to be able to use it in social research.

Prerequisites

MATH 125 or equivalent and permission of instructor