Introduction to Statistics for Data Science

This course will provide you with the knowledge to understand some of the basic statistical concepts and practices that are the foundations of data science and the way we analyze data. We’ll also be highlighting how statistics can be misused and abused, leading to accidental misunderstandings or deliberate distortions to support a particular prejudiced view.

Throughout this course, you’ll be looking at how data can be summarized in a variety of ways to give you a descriptive overview of large data sets and their variations. We’ll explore how data distributions can be understood and compared. You’ll also learn how you can start finding patterns in the data, where changes in one variable may be (partly) explained by changes in another. In addition, you’ll learn a little about how to estimate the likelihood of certain outcomes based on certain prior information. Finally, we’ll link this up to some of the common tools available that make these kinds of analyses easier.

The course is spread over six weeks and consists of lectures and weekly assignments.
Statistics can be a complex subject, but in this course, you’ll revisit the fundamental principles and start to appreciate how it can be used in your everyday life. We’ll focus primarily on the key principles.