University of Waterloo - ECON 221: Statistics for Economists

This course introduces students to describing economic data and drawing inferences from features of economic data. Starting from fundamental axioms of probability, students will learn about the calculation of probabilities of basic events and the features of random variables, the most important tool for representing the outcomes of complex economic phenomena. Students will describe discrete and continuous random variables via their probability distributions and summary statistics such as means and standard deviations, as well as the relationships between two random variables in terms of covariance, correlation, and simple regression models. The concepts of hypothesis testing and confidence intervals, and the fundamentals of statistical inference are discussed for basic features of random variables and for comparing the features of more than one random variable.

The main topics covered include descriptive statistics, various probability topics, and both discrete and continuous random variables. The course also delves into the normal distribution, the central limit theorem, and explores confidence intervals along with an introduction to hypothesis testing. Advanced topics such as hypothesis testing and linear regression are also discussed, providing a comprehensive overview of statistical concepts.

Prerequisite: ECON 101 or ECON 100/COMM 103. Not open to students in the Faculty of Mathematics.
Corequisite: ECON 211 or Science and Business students or Biotech/Chartered Professional Accountancy students.