STAT455-12S1 (C) Semester One 2012

Sampling Methods

15 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 20 February 2012
End Date: Sunday, 24 June 2012
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Sunday, 4 March 2012
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Sunday, 20 May 2012

Description

Sampling Methods

STAT312 and STAT455 are courses in survey methods, concentrating mainly on sample designs. The course is designed to give students an understanding of how to select samples from various types of populations of varying characteristics and produce population estimates along with measures of uncertainties in those estimates. Also you will gain some insights in the practical applications of the design of survey collections.

The lecturer for this course has worked for many years designing samples and surveys for Statistics New Zealand.

For a full list of 2012 Honours courses, please refer to the Department of Mathematics and Statistics Honours Booklet Mathematics and Statistics Honours Booklet

Learning Outcomes

  • being able to relate the inferences from the sample to the population and define and quantify quality measures on these inferences
  • understand simple random, stratified, cluster, pps and adaptive sample designs along with their strengths and weaknesses leading to good decision making as to which one to use in a particular circumstance
  • the design and testing of data collection instruments, mainly in terms of questionnaire design
  • gain an understanding of the practical difficulties of collecting data and possible methods to overcome deficiencies in the data collection
  • writing a technical report

Prerequisites

Subject to approval of the Head of School.

Course Coordinator

Marco Reale

Lecturer

Richard Penny

Assessment

Assessment Due Date Percentage 
Internal Assessment - TBA 60%
Final Examination 40%


3 assignments, each worth 10%
A practical data collection project worth 30%
A final exam worth 40%

The project gives you practice in analysing data and presenting results in a written report. The assignments will use R for some parts.

The assignments and project involve time and effort, but are an opportunity for you to better understand sampling methods and data collection. The project will also assist you in developing your writing skills, an important skill for a future statistician.  We discuss how to write a report during lectures, and provide considerable support especially for students who have not had the chance to develop their scientific writing skills.

Textbooks / Resources

Textbook
Lohr, S.L. 2010 Sampling: Design and Analysis (2nd ed), Duxbury.

Recommended Reading:
Crawley, M.J. 2005. Statistics : an introduction using R. Wiley
Crawley, M.J. 2007. The R book. Wiley.
Särndal, C.E., Swensson, B. & Wretman, J. 1992, Model Assisted Survey Sampling. Springer
Schaeffer, R.L., Mendenhall, W., and Ott, L., 1996, Elementary Survey Sampling, 5rd ed., Duxbury.
Thompson, S.K. 1992. Sampling, Wiley

These are on reserve in the EPS Library.

Indicative Fees

Domestic fee $788.00

* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.

For further information see Mathematics and Statistics .

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