Course Description and Student Learning Outcomes

General Course Description

Math 15 teaches statistical skills and understanding required to analyze studies and other information encountered in daily life. Knowledge of statistics is important in many disciplines and careers, including nursing, psychology, political science, business, economics, and biology. In addition, statistics will appear in many aspects of your everyday life, including the newspaper, television, sports, etc. Nearly every example and problem you will work on throughout the class will use actual data from actual studies in these and other fields.

In Math 15, we will explore statistics with a focus on conceptual understanding of why and when we use statistics, while letting technology (StatCrunch, a program that is included with MyLab Statistics, and TI-83 or TI-84 calculators) do most of the calculations for us. This does not mean the class will be easy: You will be challenged to think and reason carefully and analytically throughout the course, and then clearly explain your solutions in written form. The general objective is to master the core elements of Statistics and learn how to apply these tools in the real world. Our goal in this course is to help you be able to make more statistically informed decisions.

Specific topics to be covered include an exploration of concepts in statistics, descriptive statistics, probability theory, the Central Limit Theorem, estimation of population parameters from a sample, hypothesis testing, correlation and linear regression, introduction to analysis of variance, and computer simulations.

Student Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of Math 15, students will be able to:

1. Use numerical and graphical methods to summarize, display, and interpret data sets.

2. Estimate population parameters from sample statistics.

3. Perform one and two sample hypothesis tests for population means and proportions.

• For additional details regarding course objectives and topics, please see the official Course Outline on the SRJC Website:

  • Math 15 Course Outline