Course content

The course covers basic statistical methodology applied to the civil and transport area, as well as basic understanding of statistical concepts.

Learning outcome

Knowledge: The statistical basics and some general common sense of statistics (terminology, population and sampling, problem structuring, correlation vs. causality, significance, hypotheses, goodness-of-fit)

Skills: The candidate is able to use a toolbox containing some common statistical methods (comparison of two means [hypotheses testing, t-test, Chi2-test], simple regression)

General competence: Have an overview of statistic methods (what statistical method to use depending on the structure of your problem, the distribution of your variables and the form of relationship between variables)

Learning methods and activities

The course is comprised of one start-up-meeting and five-six seminars at two-three weeks interval, max 10 course participants. At the end of each seminar the student is given a set of new questions to answer until the next seminar while reading up on a new topic. At the following seminar the questions are discussed and the student hands in a PM with his/her answers. The language of the seminars is English, unless all students speak Norwegian. The language of PMs is either English or Norwegian at the students own discretion.

Specific conditions

Recommended previous knowledge

Basic statistical course on university level.

Required previous knowledge

The course will be run if at least 3 students with relevant background wish to attend. If you wish to attend, please contact the course coordinator. Students not admitted to the PhD programme in engineering may be approved by the course coordinator.

Course materials

The course participants choose their own statistics literature, but a list of potential titles/sources is handed out at the start of the course.