DISC: 203 –Probability &
Statistics
Lecture 1: Introduction
Instructor: Fahad Mehmood
E-mail: fahad.mehmood@lums.edu.pk
Office: Zoom
Hours: (As per appointment) 1
Objectives
•To enable you to
•solve problems using basic concepts of probability
•Understand the theory of inferential statistics
•analyze data by identifying appropriate statistical
techniques, computing statistics and interpreting
results
•present and defend their empirical analysis
effectively
2
Sessions
•26 sessions, including 2 Labs
•Software: R –bringing your laptops would
help
•Basic statistics and probability –10 sessions
•Statistical inference –6 sessions
•Regression –10 sessions
3
Learning resource
•Main text book:
•James McClave, P.George Benson, Terry Sincich.
Statisitcs for Business and Economics. 12th Edition.
Prentice Hall, NJ.
•Supplementary book:
•Gonick, L. and Smith W.,The Cartoon guide to
Statistics, HarperPerennial, NY.
•Khan academy
•Khan Academy is a free on-line maths and stats
resource
•It’s built around the American high school maths
curriculum
4
Why Study This course?
•Broad range of applications
•Sports, Policy, Managerial Decision Making,
Entertainment, Healthcare, Manufacturing etc etc
•Let’s discuss some applications
5
•Netflix is the world’s largest online DVD movie rental service provider.
Around 26,000,000 members access to more than 100,000 titles.
•The company was founded in 1997. Headquarter in Los Gatos,
California.
•It started its subscription based digital distribution service in 1999.
•As of July 2016, Netflix reported over 83 million subscribers
worldwide, including more than 47 million in the U.S.
6
