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Scientific and Statistical Thinking

Target audience

Note that this course is not open to students on an undergraduate degree or to students on a taught postgraduate degree programme.

Qualifications needed

No prerequisites

Course pre-work

No pre course work

Course information

This is an introductory course on statistical and scientific thinking - but not in the way you may have considered it before. The focus will be on how to think about statistical issues in science and in society more generally. There won’t be any statistical analysis but instead a lot of thinking critically about data, data collection, analysis and drawing conclusions both from scientific reports and from scientific stories in the press. The module will provide a useful methodological background for anyone intending to use quantitative data.

The whole course is spread over semesters 1 and 2 and there will be a guided programme for self-study. Course materials - lecture notes, exercises and tutorials - will be available on Moodle.

The course will start in week 5 and there will be regular, online discussion groups with the course instructor (each lasting 1 hour). The discussion will cover material not in the lecture notes and so attendance is strongly recommended.

The weekly time commitment is anticipated to be about 1-2 hours which includes learning through the course notes and attending the optional discussion group.

Aims and objectives

The course material covers:

• Different definitions of science and pseudoscience
• Basic logic
• Experimental design
• Drawing conclusions
• Scientific publication
• The rationale of statistics and modelling
• The principles of visualising of data
• Reproducibility
• The role of science in society
• Statistics and science in the media

Tutors

Professional staff, University of St Andrews

Course provider

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