Everybody in today's society needs to have a basic understanding of data analysis and statistics concepts, in order to be able to synthesize this quantitative information. We need to be able to understand what is being presented, and to ask the right questions about any conclusions that are drawn from it.
In this course, we will aim to gain this basic understanding. We will discuss the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data. We will learn some basic tools to explore and summarize data, in order to look for important overall features. We will discuss some ideas of randomness and probability. In this course we stress an understanding of basic ideas and concepts, and applications and limitations of the tools we learn.
Statistics is not math. Although we need some basic arithmetical skills (and a calculator), statistics problems are word problems. Interpreting the words of the question, and finding the words to express the answer, are the most important parts of solving any statistics question.