ECON 41: STATISTICS FOR ECONOMISTS - Summer 2017 Session A
Department of Economics, UCLA
El Hadi Caoui
Contact: Instructor’s email address is ecaoui@ucla.edu.
E-Mails: I will give the lowest priority to E-mail inquiries regarding
announcements made in class, and E- mail inquiries that can be answered by
reading this syllabus. Please make sure that your full name with proper
capitalization and Economics 41 appear in the “Sender” and in the “Subject”
lines; I routinely delete suspicious e-mails without opening them.
Lecture: Monday and Wednesday 10:45am-12:50pm, BUNCHE 2209A
Office Hour: Mon and Wed, 9:30-10:30am, Alper Room (BUNCHE 2265).
Description: This course is an introduction to the theory and practice of
statistics with an emphasis on its use in economics. It will introduce basic
statistical concepts such as random variables, probability distributions,
estimation, confidence intervals and hypothesis testing.
Textbook: The textbook for the course is A Brief Course in Mathematical
Statistics by Elliot A. Tanis and Robert V. Hogg (Prentice Hall).
Course Outline: Maple exercises need not be read or understood.
1. Probability
a. Basic Concepts
b. Methods of Enumeration – Only three topics including Sampling
with Replacement, Combination, Binomial Coefficients
c. Conditional Probability
d. Independent Events
e. [Skip Section 1.5 Bayes’s Theorem]
2. Discrete Distributions
a. Discrete Probability Distributions – Topics include Mean, Variance,
Sample Mean, and Sample Variance
b. Expectations. [Unbiased estimation and Chebyshev’s inequality
