Week 00. Prerequisites for part on quantitative research methods

What to refresh before weeks 1 to 3, with pre-recorded lectures and Khan Academy units

This is the handout distributed to both cohorts. Download it as a PDF: 2024/25 version · 2023/24 version. The reading list that accompanied it in 2024/25 is on the reading list page.

Week 1 Prerequisites

Key prerequisite for this week is the undergraduate level of knowledge in statistics. This includes, but not limited to understanding the following concepts:

• Mean, Median, Mode, Maximum, Minimum, Quantiles, Quartiles, Percentiles;
• Box plot and Histogram;
• Distribution, skew and kurtosis;
• Power (\(x^a=b\)) and the logarithm transformation \(\log_a b = x\). Properties of the logarithm: \(\log_a 1=0\) and \(\log_a 0 = -\infty\) .

To bridge any of the knowledge gaps, you may follow materials prerecorded for you and available on Ilias:

1. Introduction to statistics and scale levels. Slides and Exercises
2. Basic measures. Slides
3. Understanding and visualizing data I. Slides and Exercises
4. Understanding and visualizing data II. Slides and Exercises

Optional materials

If materials mentioned above are insufficient, consider following the unit Summarizing quantitative data and Displaying and comparing quantitative data from the Khan academy. Specifically, you are encourage to pay close attention to:

• Measuring center in quantitative data
• Interquartile range (IQR)
• Box and whisker plots
• Displaying quantitative data with graphs with specific focus on the videos:
  • “Creating a histogram”, “Histograms” and “Interpreting a histogram”.
• Introduction to Logarithm
  • See also Unit: Exponential & logarithmic functions
• Finally, a wide range of text books is available in the library.

Week 2 Prerequisites

• Mean, Variance, Standard deviation;
• Probability;
• Normal Distribution and confidence intervals;

Pre-recorded videos available on Ilias:

5. Probability. Slides and Exercises.
6. Statistical distributions. Slides and Exercises.
7. Confidence intervals. Slides and Exercises.

Optional materials

• Variance and standard deviation of a population (29 min) and a sample (20 min)
• More on standard deviation (15 min)
• Basic theoretical probability (30 min)

Week 3 Only optional materials

There no specific materials prerecorded on Ilias. However, to enhance learning experience, one may consider following Khan Academy module on Modeling data distributions and specifically such topics as:

• Percentiles (10 min)
• Z-scores (11 min)
• Normal distributions and the empirical rule (20 min)