GEM2901 Reporting Statistics in the Media

Module Description
Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write' (H.G. Wells). In the Information Age every educated person is surrounded by statistical information of all kinds. This information comes frequently through the media from governmental, scientific and commercial worlds. This module, using a minimum of mathematical or statistical prerequisites, aims to make the student statistically literate in reading and understanding such information. The course will be based on real world case studies of issues of current importance and relevance. The students' objectives in this course are as follows: (1) Students will learn to read, critically analyze, write about and present reports about all types of quantitative information. (2) Students will learn the strengths and weaknesses of using quantitative information in different circumstances. (3) Students will study a number of case studies of current interest. They will be able to compare and contrast the statistical treatments from different sources.

Topics
- The Benefits and Risks of Using Statistics
- Reading the News
- Measurements, Mistakes, and Misunderstandings
- How to Get a Good Sample
- Experiments and Observational Studies
- Getting the Big Picture
- Summarising and Displaying Data
- Relationships between Measurement Variables
- Relationships Can Be Deceiving
- Relationships Between Categorical Variables
- Understanding Probability and Long-Term Expectations
- Psychological Influences on Personal Probability
- When Intuition Differs from Relative Frequency

Well honestly, I didn't feel there were much of an advantage to take this module as a statistics major. This module teaches you to think critically about any studies you may come across in the news in a systematic manner. There are very little statistics or mathematics in this module.

Workload
Two two-hours lectures 
This module was taught by Prof Chua Tin Chiu. The lectures will be held either very early in the morning (8am) or late in the evening (6pm). Very often, Prof Chua would digress and start talking about some story. They were kind of entertaining lah. I didn't really attend the lectures because most of them were pretty self-explanatory. You just need to copy down the "tutorial" answers at the end of every lecture.

No tutorials
Prof Chua will cover a few questions pertaining to the lecture topic at the end of the lecture. You just need to understand and copy down the answers.

Textbook is not recommended. 
Well the textbook is stated as compulsory but I only used it for the projects. So I do not think it is worth the cash to buy the textbook.

Lectures were not webcasted.

Assessment
20% Project 1
20% Project 2
60% Final

There is no mid term for this module. However there are two projects which are quite time consuming. These two projects are to train you to use the techniques taught to analyse newspaper articles.

The final paper includes about 30 MCQ questions and a few open ended questions. The 30 MCQ are quite manageable. The open ended questions will be similar to the "tutorial" questions covered at the end of every lecture. However the open ended questions can be ambiguous and hard to answer.

Personal
This module is very manageable because the contents are easy. There's nothing much to memorise too. You just need to be very clear of the concepts and you should be fine.

Extra notes to readers: I have the TB and project descriptions! I won't be uploading my project though! Download them from my Dropbox.