2025 (Current Year) Faculty Courses Liberal arts and basic science courses Humanities and social science courses
Statistics A
- Academic unit or major
- Humanities and social science courses
- Instructor(s)
- Takehiro Ikeda
- Class Format
- Lecture
- Media-enhanced courses
- -
- Day of week/Period
(Classrooms) - Class
- -
- Course Code
- LAH.T101
- Number of credits
- 100
- Course offered
- 2025
- Offered quarter
- 3Q
- Syllabus updated
- Mar 19, 2025
- Language
- Japanese
Syllabus
Course overview and goals
Recently, statistics have been attracting attention with emergence of big data. This is because we need statistical knowledge and sense to analyze data on people or society. This course focuses the basic concepts of statistics (descriptive statistics, correlation, test, estimation, etc.), and shows some applications of statistics in the social science.
Through this course, students learn the basic concepts of statistics and nurture the ability to tackle social issues with them.
Course description and aims
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
1) Understand the basics of statistics.
2) Understand nature of statistical methods (descriptive statistics, correlation, causal inference).
3) Understand how apply statistics to the social sciences.
Keywords
descriptive statistics, cross tabulation, correlation, spurious correlation, causal inference, social survey
Competencies
- Specialist skills
- Intercultural skills
- Communication skills
- Critical thinking skills
- Practical and/or problem-solving skills
Class flow
The instructor will lecture about basic statistics based on the textbook. Students should solve some problems and submit their answers at the end of each class. At the end of term, students must submit the final report.
Course schedule/Objectives
| Course schedule | Objectives | |
|---|---|---|
| Class 1 | Introduction: statistics in social science | Understand the idea of statistics through some applications of statistics in the social science. |
| Class 2 | Collect data: social survey | Understand how social surveys collect data. |
| Class 3 | Summarize data: descriptive statistics | Understand descriptive statistics. |
| Class 4 | Caputure relationships: cross tabulation and correlation | Understand cross tabulation and correlation. |
| Class 5 | Control variables: spurious correlation | Understand sprious correlation and controlling variables. |
| Class 6 | Test for difference of means | Testing hypotheses on means |
| Class 7 | Causal Inference in Statistics, Future of statistics | Understand Causal Inference in Statistics. Consider the applicability of statistics. |
Study advice (preparation and review)
To enhance effective learning, students are encouraged to spend approximately 100 minutes preparing for class and another 100 minutes reviewing class content afterwards (including assignments) for each class.
They should do so by referring to textbooks and other course material.
Textbook(s)
I will give out lecture materials at every class.
Reference books, course materials, etc.
Course materials will be specified by the instructor.
Evaluation methods and criteria
Students’ course scores are based on class reports 30% and the final report 70%.
Related courses
- LAH.T201 ： Statistics B
- LAH.T301 ： Statistics C
Prerequisites
In class, Students are required to have a basic knowledge of statistics.
We may use statistical software such as Excel and Python.
However, since the assignments can be done at home, you do not need to bring a PC to university.
Other
Due to time constraints, make sure that I will be lecturing on basic statistical analysis using social science data and report writing methods, and will not be lecturing on advanced statistical analysis methods.