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Introduction to Statistics - Part 1

Target audience

The course is open to University of St Andrews staff and students matriculated on a doctoral degree or the following research degree programmes – MSc (Res), MSt (Res), and MPhil (by research). The course is not open to students on an undergraduate degree or to students on a taught postgraduate degree programme (MSc, MLitt, or MRes).

Qualifications needed

There are no pre-requisites for participants enrolling for Part 1 (semester 1), however knowledge of data collection, data summaries and basic probability will be required for Part 2. Some prior knowledge of R/RStudio would be helpful but this will be introduced during Part I. It would be helpful if R and RStudio are installed on your laptop before the course starts but guidance will be provided after enrolling for the course and in the introductory session.

Course pre-work

none

Course information

Introduction to Statistics is a course for University of St Andrews research degree students (see eligibility advice below) and staff. The aim of this course is to introduce basic statistical concepts and analysis methods. The focus is practical application of statistics rather than theory and using R/RStudio to implement the methods. The whole course is split into two parts (one part per semester) and participants can do one or both parts.

The course is facilitated by St Leonard's Postgraduate College and the Centre for Educational Enhancement and Development (CEED) and delivered by the Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling (CREEM).

Aims and objectives

Content and Structure

Semester 1

I               Data collection, types, and visual and numerical summaries

II             Probability, statistical distributions, and confidence intervals

Semester 2

III            Hypothesis tests (t tests, ANOVA, categorical data)

IV            Regression and linear models.

The course includes a substantial practical component and the methods covered will be implemented using the statistical programming language R, and user-friendly environment RStudio.

The whole course is spread over semesters 1 and 2 and there will be a guided programme for self-paced study. Course material (lecture notes, exercises and computer practicals) will be available on Moodle.

There will be an introductory session to get you started and throughout the course there will be online help sessions. The introductory help session will be held at 10am on Friday 3^rd October 2025 (online help session timings TBA). You are encouraged to attend the introductory session in-person to meet the course tutor and fellow participants. Participation in the help sessions is optional. 

The weekly time commitment is anticipated to be about 2-3 hours (working through the course notes and associated computer practical and attending any help session).

There is an option for participants to obtain a certificate (for each part) by attempting all assessed quizzes and a score of at least 50% obtained for each quiz. See the course timetable for the deadline for submitting responses to the assessed quizzes.

Tutors

Professional staff, University of St Andrews

Course provider

St Leonard's Postgraduate CollegeEmail: stlc@st-andrews.ac.uk