Aims

To provide students with a fundamental understanding of the basic statistical techniques (summary statistics, probability distributions, interval estimation and regression analysis) routinely used in the chemical, process, and engineering industries.

This course provides the basis for all subsequent statistical modules by introducing the fundamental statistical tools to undertake a preliminary statistical analysis of any data. More specifically the course introduces basic statistical tools that enable data to be presented, described and interpreted in an appropriate and statistically robust manner.

Outline Of Syllabus

Introduction: Descriptive statistics;
Probability: probability theory; probability distributions (continuous and discrete); normal distribution; Statistical Inference and hypothesis testing: Sampling distributions and confidence intervals – One sample problems (mean, standard deviation, paired comparisons) and Two sample problems
Regression analysis: method of least squares.

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

In-person lectures convey the statistical concepts and theory and their application in process engineering. Tutorial questions will be supplied for students' to work through each week. Drop-in tutorials will be used to address student queries and aid understanding. Short video walkthroughs of Excel will help demonstrate how to use software to carry out data analysis.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The examination enables the assessment of whether the students have understood the methodologies and whether they are sufficiently conversant with the application of the techniques to real world scenarios.