This course discusses properties and applications of random variables. When you’re done, you’ll have enough firepower to undertake a wide variety of modeling and analysis problems; and you’ll be well-prepared for the upcoming Statistics courses. We’ll begin by introducing the concepts of discrete and continuous random variables. For instance, how many customers are likely to arrive in the next hour (discrete)? What’s the probability that a lightbulb will last more than a year (continuous)? We’ll learn about various properties of random variables such as the expected value, variance, and moment generating function. This will lead us to a discussion of functions of random variables. Such functions have many uses, including some wonderful applications in computer simulations. If you enjoy random variables, then you’ll really love joint (two-dimensional) random variables. We’ll provide methodology to extract marginal (one-dimensional) and conditional information from these big boys. This work will enable us to study the important concepts of independence and correlation. Along the way, we’ll start working with the R statistical package to do some of our calculations and analysis.
An excellent online course offered by edX: how it works
edX courses consist of weekly learning sequences. Each learning sequence is composed of short videos interspersed with interactive learning exercises, where students can immediately practise the concepts from the videos. The courses often include tutorial videos that are similar to small on-campus discussion groups, an online textbook, and an online discussion forum where students can post and review questions and comments to each other and teaching assistants. Where applicable, online laboratories are incorporated into the course.
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