1A Mathematics for Social Scientists I
Chris Saker, University of Essex
9 - 20 July (two week course / 15 hrs)
Detailed Course Outline [PDF]
THIS COURSE IS NOW FULLY BOOKED AND WE ARE NO LONGER ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS
Mathematics for Social Scientists is offered throughout the six weeks with teaching scheduled daily before other courses. If taken in conjunction with another course, there is no extra charge.
Course Content
Part 1 of the course is an introductory course which begins by reviewing the equations and graphs of straight lines and simple curves. It progresses to the study of functions such as trigonometric, logarithmic and exponential functions, with applications to logistic regression and the normal distribution. The session concludes with an introduction to differentiation and some application to maximum likelihood estimation.
Course Objectives
This course is intended for those with little recent mathematical experience but who are motivated to learn. The aim is to provide a service course in support of other Summer School courses (primarily in the analysis of quantitative data) by presenting a unified introduction to the mathematical ideas and techniques used in those courses. The structure of the course is arranged, firstly, to provide an introduction to the concepts and techniques for the practical side of the subject, and, secondly, to develop a deeper understanding of the ways in which these concepts and techniques are connected. Summer School participants may take any one Part and/or all three Parts of the course, but anyone taking Parts 2 or 3 will be presumed to be familiar with the material covered in the preceding Parts.
Course Prerequisites
Participants in the course should be familiar with the basic ideas of arithmetic and algebra (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, use of brackets, positive, negative, fractional powers, and the solution of simple equations). participants should possess a basic scientific calculator.
Reading
For a review of the concepts listed in the prerequisites we recommend the Algebra Refresher which can be found by following the revision booklets link from the maths centre.
Also the following book is recommended however purchase is not necessary for the course:
Stroud, K.A., Booth, D. J., 2007, Engineering Mathematics (6th edn.), Palgrave Macmillan, NY