STA 130A Mathematical Statistics: Brief Course


Summary of course contents:

  • Basic probability
    • Random experiments, sample spaces, events
    • Elementary rules of probability
    • Independence, conditional probability, Bayes Theorem
  • Random variables
    • Discrete and continuous random variable
    • Densities and distributions
    • Expectations, mean, variance
    • Covariance and conditional expectation for discrete random variables
    • Chevyshev's inequality
  • Special distributions and models, with applications
    • Discrete distributions including binomial, poisson, geometric, negative binomial and hypergeometric
    • Continuous distributions including normal, exponential, gamma, uniform
    • Special conbinations and relationships:
      • Sums of independant binomial, poisson, normal and gamma random variables
      • Poisson processes and waiting times
  • Bridging statistics and probability
    • Sampling distributions
    • Special sampling: t, chi-square, F
    • Central limit theorem and law of large numbers
    • Approximations for certain discrete random variables
  • Point estimation
    • Minimum variance unbiased estimation, Cramer-Rao inequality
    • Maximum likelihood estimation
    • Method of moments estimators
    • Desirable properties of estimators
  • Interval estimation
    • The basic idea of a confidence interval
    • Confidence intervals for means, proportions and variances
    • Computing sample size for desired width

Illustrative reading:
None

GE3:
SE, QL

Potential Overlap:
Statistics 131A and Mathematics 135A cover the topics in the first part of the course but with more in depth and theoretical orientations. 

History:
None