Quantitative and Mathematical Methods

Sciences Po Euro-American Campus, Reims
Level 1 groups: François Briatte

What you get in this course:

• essential notions in calculus, probability and statistics
• small-scale, abstract problems that imitate real-world parameters
• three exams to verify that you are working on improving your skills

The course is pencil-and-paper only. Please refer to the course syllabus for details.

2012-12-03: Today is our last day. I thank you all for your attention and for your efforts, and wish you the best for the rest of your studies. I hope to see some of you next semester too!

2012-12-09: Example applications have been added to help with exam revisions. Exam conditions have been explained in class. Please check with admin for other details. Best of luck to all!

2013-04-22: Some of the course exercises have been edited and assembled for the general review before the resit exam. All topics mentioned in the review will appear in the exam.

Slides

Introduction

Read CK-12 Calc (1)

1. Notation
2. Functions

Calculus

Read CK-12 Calc (2-3 & 6)

1. Exponentials and logarithms
2. Derivatives
3. Review
4. Exam answers and first problem sheet

Example applications:

• calculation of growth rates
• calculation of compound interest
• calculation of exponential decay

Probability

Read CK-12 Adv Prob & Stats (3–6)

1. Random variables
2. Probability distributions
3. Review
4. Exam answers and first problem sheet

Example applications:

• likelihood of a discrete event
• likelihood of a binomial variable
• likelihood of a Bernoulli trial

Statistics

Read CK-12 Adv Prob & Stats (7–8)

1. Confidence intervals
2. Significance tests

Example applications:

• assess the normality of a distribution
• calculate a 95% confidence interval
• read a two-tailed t-test (example output)

Links

• LaTeX Lab — typeset documents and equations using the LaTeX language
• Sage – free mathematical software system (for Python programmers)
• Wolfram Alpha — solves and plots functions, does many other math things

Links are not part of the revision content.