Unit I: Language and Logic of Inference

Children learn the alphabet before tackling The Odyssey. Musicians become proficient in scales before playing in a symphony. And, chefs create world-class culinary experiences because they are experts at working with their ingredients. Similarly, working with statistical models benefits from understanding the language and logic of statistical inference.

This first unit introduces the key components of any analysis — asking well-posed questions, collecting useful data, summarizing your data to tell a story, quantifying the strength of a signal. Once we are familiar with these ingredients, we can begin putting them together to address a range of interesting questions.