IntroStat4Muslims

SEE LINK for TEXTBOOK on sidebar, for the latest version of lecture notes currently under preparation

It is surprising for most of people to see the title of this website i.e. Intro Stat for Muslims. As per our prior beliefs Statistics is only interpretation of the facts that we observe without any role of personal judgments or opinions. In this case it would not be appropriate to categorize statistics as Islamic or un-Islamic. However in fact none of valuable information can be extracted from the data without invoking personal judgment or opinion. For example you are being asked to produce single point summary of a given data set; should it be simple average, median, mode, trimmed mean or something else? The answer depends on your personal opinion. When you go to more complex statistical problems, you will see more deep involvement of personal opinions in selecting appropriate statistical summary of any phenomenon. While making a model for consumption, should you use GDP, GNP, GNI, NNI or something else as an appropriate measure of income? Should you use log-log for or semi log form or some exponential model? What type of time series model is more appropriate, ARDL, VAR, VARMA, or some non-linear model? All these decisions involve your personal judgments. Once we realize that opinions do involve in statistical decision making, Islam provides best guide to shape the opinions properly.

In fact numbers are used aggressively by our Western Masters to dictate the economic and other policies. Muslims who think that Statistics is just the facts and logical arguments tend to accept dictations without any hesitation because they think that West is superior to them in use of statistical sciences, and what they are saying must be true. This tradition goes against the interests of Islam and Muslims.

The objective of this course is to learn the tools of statistics as well as to understand how conflicting results can be produced from the same data sets, what are implications of those results and what are most appropriate statistical for any particular data set.

About The Course

This textbook is part of the project of Islamization of Knowledge. We will study statistics in a way that is in accordance with Islamic teachings. Islamic views on knowledge, as well as the methodology for teaching and learning, differ radically from Western views. About the Western transition to secular thought, Tawney writes that “A hierarchy of values, embracing all human interests and activities in a system of which the apex is religion, is replaced by the conception of separate and parallel compartments, between which a due balance should be maintained, but which have no vital connection with each other.” The object of this textbook is to show how radically our perspectives on the subject change when the contents are assimilated into a meaningful framework defined by Islam. These differences will be illustrated concretely in the course of these lectures on introductory statistics for Muslims