4. (CHUM 104) Spreading Sheets
Note that the description and specifics of this course are drafts only, and wil be revised after consultation. Please send comments to Michael Best.
Possible Calendar entry:
The use of spreadsheets and basic programs on statistics in formats typical of the Humanities. Creation of a typical financial or grade spreadsheet. Statistics and what they mean.
Course content and objectives:
- Spreadsheets. rows, columns, cells, formulae
- creation of a spreadsheet to plan a monthly budget or to record grades.
- Statistics.
- common concepts and their application
- critique of public opinion polls and of scientific epidemiological studies
- Research methods.
- examples of quantitative research from the Humanities closest to the Social Sciences
- The analysis of texts by computers
- stylistics, authorship and attribution, linguistic patterns discerned by computer analysis.
- Wider issues.
- the issues involved in qualitative v. quantitative methods of research
- a critique of the assumptions behind statistical models
- an introduction to the differing effects of linear and non-linear equations.
Assignments:
Submission of
- A sample spreadsheet to plan a monthly budget or to record grades.
- A questionnaire testing the student's comprehension of basic statistical concepts.
- Hands-on use of a text analysis/concordance program, with specific tasks to be completed
- Questionnaire(s) to test the reading of the additional materials on "wider issues" as outlined above.
Rationale:
If Humanities students are to have the conceptual tools to sustain an argument in a world that is increasingly driven by opinion polls, and where statistics lead to conclusions in medical treatments and preventative medicine, they will need to understand the principles behind the application of statistics. This module will be of greatest interest to students in those Humanities subjects that most closely follow the methodologies of the Social Sciences, but will be valuable to all students. It will no doubt be avoided by students who have a fear of mathematics.
