Research Methodology in Statistics

Syllabus Details

• Unit I:(Research Methodology in Statistics) Motivation, objectives and purpose of research; data collection, information extraction and knowledge discovery as statistical methodology.
• Unit II:(Types of Statistical Research) Empirical research, field experiments, laboratory experiments and secondary sources of data; exploratory and confirmatory research; planned and ad-hoc methods of data collection; non-response and methods of recovering the missing response.
• Unit III:(Sampling of Non-standard Populations) Sampling designs when the population is contiguous or non-stationary, or when sampling units are not distinguishable, are not enumerated, are affected by the process of making the observation, or are evasive.
• Unit IV:(Response Surface Methodology) Factorial experiments with central and axial points; optimization of factor levels to maximize the response.
• Unit V:(Computing) Statistical packages such as SAS, SYSTAT and MINITAB; other packages such as MATLAB, GAUSS, Mathematica and Maple; the R statistical computing environment.
• Unit VI:(Literature and Thesis Work) Selection of a topic for research, review of literature and its use in designing a research work; modes of literature survey: books and monographs, journals, conference proceedings, abstracting and indexing journals, e-journals and e-books; thesis writing, web searching, scientific articles, statistical databases.
• Unit VII:(Scientific Word Processing) LaTeX and MS-Word for articles, thesis reports and slides; PowerPoint features and slide preparation.
• Unit VIII:(History) History of statistics; the statistical heritage of India.

Course Learning Objective

1. Discuss the importance of research methodology in statistical research.
2. Apply sampling designs when the population is contiguous or non-stationary, or when sampling units are not distinguishable.
3. Discuss factorial experiments with central and axial points.
4. Apply scientific word processing with LaTeX and MS-Word.

Recommended Books

1. de Gruijter, Jaap, Brus, Dick, Bierkens, Marc F. P. and Knotters, Martin. Sampling for Natural Resource Monitoring. Springer, 2006
2. Thompson, Steven K. Sampling. 2nd ed. Wiley, 2002
3. Hastie, Trevor, Tibshirani, Robert and Friedman, Jerome. The Elements of Statistical Learning. 2nd ed. Springer, 2009
4. Myers, Raymond H., Montgomery, Douglas C. and Anderson-Cook, Christine M. Response Surface Methodology. 3rd ed. Wiley, 2009
5. Venables, W. N. and Ripley, B. D. Modern Applied Statistics with S. 4th ed. Springer, 2002
6. Lamport, Leslie. LaTeX: A Document Preparation System. 2nd ed. Addison-Wesley, 1999
7. Anderson, Jonathan, Durston, Berry H. and Poole, Millicent. Thesis and Assignment Writing. Wiley Eastern, 1970
8. Hald, Anders. A History of Mathematical Statistics from 1750 to 1930. Wiley, 1998
9. Ghosh, J. K., Mitra, S. K. and Parthasarathy, K. R. Glimpses of India’s Statistical Heritage. Wiley Eastern, 1992
10. Online manuals for MATLAB, MINITAB, Mathematica, SAS, GAUSS and Maple