Preface

These are course notes for MA217, Introduction to Probability and Statistics, taught at Colorado College. The course is an introduction to the main principles of statistics, including foundations of probability theory to support the development of inferential statistics. It is aimed at students who are comfortable with math at the Caculus 1 level, since the course covers in some detail the mathematical underpinnings of the methods presented. For an introduction without any prerequisites, consider MA117, Elementary Probability and Statistics.

Many datasets, examples, and sections in these notes come from Openintro Statistics, who provides open-source materials for statistics education, and whose mission is to “make educational products that are free, transparent, and lower barriers to education.” Likewise, these notes may be shared and adapted (Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license).

This course introduces:

  • Descriptive statistics (graphical and numerical)

  • Simple and multiple regression models

  • Probability and distributions (relevant for statistical inference)

  • Statistical inference (confidence intervals and hypothesis tests)