Minutes of the Meeting

Intermediate Statistics for Economics

Date: 25th January, 2024

Course Title Intermediate statistics for Economics - DSC-6

Course Code ECON006

Course Abbreviation : STAT 2

Credits 4

Duration (per week) 4 hours (3 Lectures+ 1 Tutorial)

Date of Meeting 25th January, 2024

Venue Delhi School of Economics

Convenors Rohini Somanathan and Reetika Garg

Attended By:
Kanika Pathania Sri Venkateswara College
Anu Singh Deswal Jesus and Mary College
Rakesh Kumar Dyal Singh College
Deepika Kandpal PGDAV Morning
Gaganpreet Kaur SGTB Khalsa College
Neha ARSD
Ajay Kumar Kamala Nehru college
Roshan Kumar Singh Kamala Nehru college
Shubhi Singh Lady Shri Ram College for Women
Shruti Garg Sri Guru Gobind Singh college of Commerce
Dr. Paramjeet Kaur Sri Guru Gobind Singh college of Commerce
Dr. Srishty Kasana Daulat Ram College
Dr. Deepika Goel Aryabhatta College
Learning Objectives
The Learning Objectives of this course are as follows:
• This course focuses on techniques for statistical inference. The main objective of the course is
to help students understand how to draw inference from samples regarding the underlying
populations using point estimation, interval estimation and hypothesis testing.

Learning outcomes
The Learning Outcomes of this course are as follows:
• An important learning outcome of the course will be the capacity to use and analyse statistics in
everyday life. The course will improve students’ ability to analyse data, make decisions, form
predictions, and conduct research.

A meeting of teachers of this course was held to discuss the following:

 The detailed reading list for the UGCF course to be implemented in the
academic session 2023-2024.
 The pattern of the semester-end exam.
 How to give a good intuition of the concepts to the students by using some
practical concepts.
 How to assess students for the continuous assessment

The issues discussed and the decisions taken at the meeting are given below:

1. It was felt that multiple textbooks with different notation and slightly different
definitions are confusing for students. It would be better to focus on a single textbook
and use the others as supplementary material for practice with problem-solving. This
would also allow more material in the basic textbook to be covered. Accordingly, it was
decided to use J. Devore’s textbook as the principal text.
2. Given the conceptual difficulty involved in properly understanding the notion of
sufficiency listed in Unit 2 of the syllabus, it was decided not to examine the students on
this concept.
3. The teacher’s expressed the difficulty in grading the paper in the required period of time
at the end of the semester exams. There were two main causes for this:
a) Not all teachers were willing to do a reasonable share of the corrections.
b) Each examination had too many questions and sub-parts, making grading more
time-consuming than it need be.
It was also felt that mistakes in exam papers would be avoided if a exam setters sent
in a pdf file to the exam branch.

4. In order to achieve uniformity in evaluation of final answer scripts, it was decided to

include the following notes in final question paper:
(i) All questions within each section are to be answered in a contiguous manner on
the answer sheet. Start each question on a new page, and all sub-parts of a
question should follow one after the other.
 (ii) All intermediate calculations should be rounded off to 3 decimal places. The
Unit
TOPIC READINGS FROM CORE TEXTS
No.

values provided in statistical tables should not be rounded off. All final
calculations should be rounded off to two decimal places.
5. End semester exam: This would be of 90 marks. The following decisions were taken
regarding the choice offered within topics and the weightage given.
(i) Unit 1 would be given a weight of 20 marks, Unit 2 of 30 marks and Units 3 and
4 would be combined to give a weightage of 40 marks.
(ii) All questions in Units 1 and 2 would be compulsory. There would be two
questions in each of these units.
(iii) Units 3 and 4 would together have 3 questions, of which students would be
required to do 2 questions.
(iv) There would be a limited number of sub-parts per question. No sub-part would be
less than 5 marks and if a sub-part had more than 5 marks, the marks would be in
multiples of 5.
6. The internal assessment would comprise two class tests of 12 marks each. Lecture
attendance will carry 6 marks. Problem solving during tutorials/ interpretation of results
pertaining to a set of data should be the preferred medium for continuous assessment of
35 marks out of 40. Five marks will be for attendance in tutorials.

The details of the Course Content, Topic-wise Reading list, recommended textbooks are
given below:

Content (Unit-wise):
UNIT - 1: Sampling distribution of a Statistic (12 Hours)
Concept of Statistic and parameter, Sampling distributions, Central Limit Theorem.
UNIT - 2: Estimation (12 Hours)
Estimator and methods of estimation, Point Estimation: method of moments and method of
maximum likelihood; Interval Estimation, Properties of an estimator: Consistency, Unbiasedness,
Efficiency and Sufficiency, confidence level and sample size, intervals based on Z-distribution, t-
distribution and chi-squared distribution, F-distribution.
UNIT – 3: Inference (9 Hours)
Meaning of a statistical hypothesis, errors in hypothesis testing: Type 1 and Type 2 errors, power
of a test.
UNIT - 4: Hypothesis Testing (12 Hours)
Testing of a population Mean, proportions - small and large sample tests, P-value; Testing for
variance; Testing hypothesis for two samples, testing for equality of means; testing for ratio of
variances.
 Sampling distribution of Devore: Ch 5.3, 5.4, 5.5
1.
a Statistic

2. Estimation Devore: Ch 6, Ch 7, selected sections of Ch 9

3. Inference Devore: Ch 8.1

4. Hypothesis Testing Devore: Ch 8.2 – 8.5, Ch 9

Essential Reading:
Devore, J. (2012). Probability and Statistics for Engineers, 8th ed. Cengage Learning.

Supplementary Reading:
1. Hogg, R., Tanis, E., Zimmerman, D. (2021) Probability and Statistical inference, 10th
Edition, Pearson.
2. Larsen, R., Marx, M. (2011). An introduction to mathematical statistics and its
applications. Prentice Hall.
3. Miller, I., Miller, M. (2017). J. Freund's Mathematical Statistics with Applications,
8th ed. Pearson.
4. Anderson, D. R, Sweeny, D. J, et. al (2019), Statistics for Business and Economics,
13th edition, Cengage Learning.
5. Jan Kmenta (1997), Elements of Econometrics, 2nd ed. Macmillan publishing; New
York and Collier Macmillan; London.

Recommended Readings for Teachers:

1. John A. Rice (2007). Mathematical Statistics and Data Analysis, 3rd ed. Thomson
Brooks/Cole.
2. Demetri Kantarelis, D. and Malcolm O. Asadoorian, M. O. (2009). Essentials of
Inferential Statistics, 5th edition, University Press of America.