3 semester credits

Statistical analysis supports quality management, drives decision making, enables forecasting and prediction, and provides a means for understanding many aspects of our world. Data is everywhere in today's integrated technological society, and statistical analysis provides the means to access and interpret data. Students in this course are introduced to statistics focused on working with complex data sets and analyzing big data. Students synthesize theory with practical applications to learn the fundamentals of statistical reasoning, descriptive statistics, visual data display, regression, hypothesis testing, research design, anomaly detection, and advanced analysis practices. They have the opportunity to practice using a statistical software package to solve statistical problems. Students use a publicly available big data set to formulate their own study and complete a statistical analysis.