Introduction to the Course

• Teaching staff: Assoc.Prof. Tran Thi Bich

STATISTICS IN ECONOMICS Statistics Faculty
Email: [email protected]
AND FINANCE • Lectures: as indicated
• Tutorials: 30 minutes - 1 hour, from lecture 2 to 7
• Materials:
- Gerald Keller (2011).Statistics for Management
and Economics (9th Edition).
- SPSS Statistics: Guide to Data Analysis

Topics will be covered Goals

 Develop an understanding of a variety of
• Data Presentation: Tables and Charts quantitative and statistical techniques that can be
• Data Presentation: Central Tendency and applied to a wide range of business situations.
Dispersion  Use statistical software applications to perform
essential and practical data analysis for business
• Probability
organizations.
• Sampling distribution and Estimation
 Demonstrate the ability to prepare and analyze a
• Hypothesis Testing variety of data sets for specific purposes.
 Determine which statistical techniques are best
suited to which organizational problems.

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Assessment How to achieve 10% of participation?

• Participation: 10% • Contribution in class and tutorials.

• Mid-term exams: 40% • You may also ask question.
– Two midterm exams, each accounts for 20% • Compliance with the class rules:
• Final exams: 50% – Come prepared – read the readings assigned.
• Further details (including date of exams and – Turn off cell phones during classes.
deadline of assignments) given during the
– Use laptop for studying
course.
– Do not engage in individual discussions

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1
 Mid-term exams: 40%
Hints for success
• Attend lectures and tutorials, supplement given
materials with your own comments and notes.
• Work carefully on the tutorials – doing them is how
you will understand and learn
• One group mid-term exam: 20% • Time spent trying questions is well spent
• Individual in-class mid-term exam: 20% • Constantly REFER to notes
• Use resources provided

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Lecture 1 Outline
• Introduction to statistics
Introduction to Statistics and • Basic concepts: variables and data
SPSS • Getting acquainted with SPSS

Reading materials:
Chap 1, 2 (Keller)

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What is statistics?

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2
 What is statistics?
• This is not a matter of ordering soup! Statistics
involves matters of life and death…
– If the probability of getting accident of an airplane is
1/10,000, what is your chance of survival when you are
on board?
– How do you know?
• To accomplish the above feat, Statisticians rely on
three related disciplines:
– Data analysis
– Probability
– Statistical inference
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So… The question is …

• How to get useful information from data to make a
• Statistics is all about collecting, organising and correct decision? It’s not easy! 
interpreting data
• Statistics is a way to get information from data and
make decisions under uncertainty
• Statistical analysis of data uses statistical
modelling and probability: our main focus is on
data and techniques for analysing data

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Why is statistics important? Why is statistics important?

• Financial management (capital budgeting)
• Marketing management (pricing)
• Marketing research (consumer behaviour)
• Operations management (inventory)
• Accounting (forecasting sales)
• Human resources management (performance
appraisal)
• Information systems
• Economics (summarising, predicting)

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 Types of statistics Questions for Data Analysis
• Descriptive statistics:
• In the descriptive statistics:
 Collecting, organising, summarising, and presenting data
 What is the general pattern of the studied variable
 E.g: graphical techniques;
 Applied for population or sample
numerical techniques
• In the exploratory statistics:
• Exploratory statistics:  What is the relationship amongst variables?
 Identifying relationships/associations  Applied for population or sample
 E.g: factor analysis • In the inferential statistics:
• Inferential statistics:  What can we infer for the population based on sample
 Estimating, predicting, and making decisions about results
population based on sample data  Applied for population
 E.g: estimation;
hypothesis testing
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Basic concepts: variables and data Types of data

• A variable is some characteristics of population or
sample items Data

 Eg:
• Height of students
Quantitative
• Occupation of students upon graduation Qualitative (also called
• Data are the observed values of a variable Interval)
 Eg:
• Height of 10 students: 1.6, 1.7, 1.55, 1.59, 1.5, 1.58,
1.64, 1.67, 1.58, 1.55 Nominal
Ordinal
Discrete
Continuous
• Occupation of 5 students: teller, accountant, IT,
marketing manager, teacher

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Qualitative data (Categorical data) Quantitative data

• Qualitative is the kind of data that cannot be measured • Quantitative data are real number (can be measured)
(quantified)  Eg:
• Marital status: single, married, divorced, and widowed • Mid-term test marks of 10 students: 7, 8, 10, 5, 5, 6, 8, 9, 9, 7
• Study performance of students: poor, fair, good, very good, • Weights of postal packages
excellent • Monthly salary
• More classification: qualitative data can be classified as • More classification: quantitative data can be classified as
Nominal and Ordinal data interval and ratio data
 Nominal data: cannot be quantified with any meaningful – Interval data: it includes all characteristics of ordinal data but the
unit interval b/w values is meaningful and has no meaningful
interpretation of zero on the scale
- Marital status: single, married, divorced, and widowed
 Eg:
 Ordinal data: a sort of nominal data but their values are • Temperature: 10oC, 20oC, 40oC
in order
– Ratio data: data is based on a scale with a known unit of
- Study performance of students: poor, fair, good, very good, measurement and a meaningful interpretation of zero on the scale
excellent
 Eg:
- Opinions of consumers: strongly disagree, somewhat disagree,
neither disagree nor agree, agree, strongly agree • Weights of postal packages

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 More on quantitative data Activity 1

• Quantitative data can be divided into two types: discrete or • For each of the following examples of data, determine
continuous the type:
– Discrete data: take only integer value
 Eg: i. The number of miles joggers run per week
• Number of children in family ii.The starting salaries of graduates of advanced program
– Continuous data: can take any value
iii.The months in which a firm’s employees choose to take
 Eg: their vacations
• Monthly salary
iv.The occupation of graduates of Advanced Program
v. Teachers’ ranking

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Data sources Sources of secondary data

• Internet research
• Based on the method of collecting information, • Search through Vietcombank website (www.vietcombank.com.vn) to
know the exchange rate
data can be classified as Primary and Secondary • Search through Google to gather information about the performance
of private firms in Vietnam since ‘Doi moi’
– Primary data: collected by the organisation itself for
the particular purpose • Government data and official publications
• The General Statistics Office (GSO) of Vietnam provides all socio-
 Eg: you need to know the consumer’s behaviour of economic information (www.gso.gov.vn)
Techcombank, then collect this information yourself • Data from surveys carried out by GSO and other organisations
• The Ministry of Finance (www.mof.gov.vn) provides information on
– Secondary data: collected by other organisations for budget statement
other purposes • Internal and by-product data: data collected from different departments
in an organisation and used all together
 Eg: the Vietnam household living standards survey in
2010 • Data from Sale Department, Human resource Department => decision
making

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Population
• Population is a set of all items or people that share
some common characteristics
 A census is obtained by collecting information
about every member of a population
Basic concepts: population and sample
- Collect the height of Vietnamese citizens
- Verify the quality of all products that are produced by
factory X

• Parameter: a descriptive measure of a population

( ,  2 )
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 Sample Reasons to take sample (1)
• A sample is a smaller group of the population. • A census can give accurate data but population is so
large
A sample survey is obtained by collecting
information of some members of the population
- Collect the height of 1,000 Vietnamese citizens
- Verify the quality of a proportion of products that are
produced by factory X
• Statistics: a descriptive measure of a sample
(x, s2 )
Collecting information from the entire population is
• Sampling: taking a sample from the population time-consuming, expensive, and sometimes
impossible.
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Reasons to take sample (2) Important requirements

• If we are willing to accept less than 100% accuracy,
we collect information from a sample, calculate its A sample must be representative for the
statistics and use statistical inference to infer values
population. That means the profile of the
of parameters of the population
sample is the same as that of the population
• We can do this because: a certain sample size => apply sampling techniques
ensures that results from the sample are as accurate
as those of the population The sample size is large enough
• And benefits of sample: sample allows to investigate
more detailed information

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Moving from population to sample You need a sampling frame

Population

Sampling frame
(a list of all items of
the population)

Sample

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 The second requirements Getting acquainted with SPSS
The sample size is large enough
• Import the file ‘assignment 1 data set.xls’ into
SPSS and get familiar with SPSS.

This question will be answered in lecture 7

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