POLb1139 Statistical Reasoning

Faculty of Social Studies
Spring 2025
Extent and Intensity
1/1/0. 5 credit(s). Type of Completion: zk (examination).
In-person direct teaching
Teacher(s)
doc. Mgr. Peter Spáč, Ph.D. (lecturer)
Mgr. Petr Voda, Ph.D. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
doc. Mgr. Peter Spáč, Ph.D.
Department of Political Science – Faculty of Social Studies
Contact Person: Mgr. Lucie Pospíšilová
Supplier department: Division of Politology – Department of Political Science – Faculty of Social Studies
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
there are 29 fields of study the course is directly associated with, display
Course objectives
Statistics is an important part of social science research. This course is an introduction of statistical inference and methods. The aim of the course is to present students to basic statistical concepts and techniques which they will use in their own research. Students will learn statistical techiques using the SPSS statisical software. No previous knowledge of statistics is required.
Learning outcomes
Students will know how to:
- understand and explain basic statistical concepts;
- analyze social science data;
- create and test hypotheses;
- apply statistical methods
Syllabus
  • 1. Course introduction;
  • 2. What is statistics, variables, levels of measurement
  • 3. Introduction to SPSS
  • 4. Descriptive statistics
  • 5. Distribution of data, normal distribution
  • 6. Population, sample, statistical inference, statistical testing
  • 7. Analysis of categorical variables
  • 8. Comparison of means
  • 9. Seminar 1
  • 10. Graphs
  • 11. Correlation
  • 12. Seminar 2
Literature
    required literature
  • WHEELAN, Charles. Naked statistics : stripping the dread from the data. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 282 s. 978-0-393-34777-7.
  • GRAVETTER, Frederick J., Larry B. WALLNAU a Lori-Ann B. FORZANO. Essentials of Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences. Cengage Learning, 2017.
  • RABUŠIC, Ladislav, Petr SOUKUP and Petr MAREŠ. Statistická analýza sociálněvědních dat (prostřednictvím SPSS) (Statistical data analysis (with SPSS)). 2. přepracované vyd. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 2019, 573 pp. ISBN 978-80-210-9247-1. URL info
  • FIELD, Andy and Jeremy MILES. Discovering statistics using R. SAGE, 2012. ISBN 978-1-4462-0045-2. info
Teaching methods
Lectures and seminars
Assessment methods
Seminar assignments and final examination
Language of instruction
Czech
Further Comments
The course is taught annually.
The course is taught: every week.
The course is also listed under the following terms Autumn 2020, Spring 2022, Spring 2023, Spring 2024.
  • Enrolment Statistics (Spring 2025, recent)
  • Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/fss/spring2025/POLb1139