Stat­ist­ics and Quant­it­at­ive Meth­ods

Course content

In both business and public policy, the demand for "evidence" is stronger than ever. Managers and policymakers place an increasing premium on knowing "what works", when they decide in which direction to take the company or the country. Additionally, recent decades have seen an explosion of data availability. Combined with advances in causal inference, this puts social scientists in a better position to answer the demand for evidence than they have ever been.

This course provides an applied introduction to statistics that allows us not only to examine whether a strategy or policy "works", but also to quantify how much  they work. This is done through theoretical and applied knowledge about statistics, causal inference, and econometrics in business and social science at an introductory and intermediate level. On completion of the course, the student should be able to understand the methods introduced in the course and apply them to specific research problems. The course introduces students to causal inference, basic statistical analysis, and multiple regression analysis. 

Please note: This course uses an applied approach and thus we rely throughout the whole course and in the examination on software use (R). Beyond the software examples in the applied textbook, students will receive a thorough introduction to the software in the early stages of the course, early stage exercise supporting materials, and have the possibility to work on parallel homework tasks.