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Course content
Statistical material and methods are used by many PhD-candidates in their research, and the purpose of this course is to provide an introduction to the three main branches of applied statistics that are used in the humanities: descriptive statistics, inferential statistics and exploratory statistical methods.
Emphasis will be placed on the main ideas and concepts that support these three disciplines, with examples drawn primarily from linguistics and literature, but the course is open to all PhD-candidates at HF. The course is aimed at researchers who do not have any prior experience in using statistical methods, but will also be relevant to those who already have some knowledge of statistics.
The course is designed with a “hands on”-approach, consisting of three one-day seminars held at two-week intervals, which combine teaching and individual practical work by the participants. During the practical work-sessions, the participants will be able to work on their own statistical material and questions with help from the course teacher.
This is a 3 ECTS course.
Seminar plan
Day 1:
14 February, 09:00 - 16:00, seminar room U30 Helga Engs hus
Short introduction to statistics for humanists; history, main areas, relationship with other fields. Examples of statistics used in the humanities. Descriptive statistics, introduction to R and descriptive statistics hands-on. Visualization and hands on.
Day 2:
28 February, 09:00 - 16:00, seminar room U35 Helga Engs hus
Statistical tests. The notion of statistical significance, and hands-on statistical tests. The concept of a linear model, a glm and model fitness. Models hands-on.
Day 3:
13 March, 09:00 - 16:00, seminar room U35 Helga Engs hus
Exploratory approaches: clustering and dimension reduction. Hands-on exploratory approaches. Mixed models. Classification hands-on. Discussion of other methods, pointers to relevant literature and wrap-up.
Learning outcomes
On completion of the course, participants at the course will have:
- an understanding of statistical thinking related to the humanities
- a basic understanding of the three branches of applied statistics as used in the humanities
- some experience in practical work with statistical methods using R
Course preparations
No prior knowledge of statistics is required for this course, but participants are expected to try out some basic tests and visualizations in R or R studio – which they either install on their machines prior to the course or use remotely from the UiO servers – before enlisting: Introduction to R
Course work
All participants are required to submit a small report on the work they did during the hands-on-part of each of the three seminar days; three reports in total. The report should address what they tried out in R during class, that is, the commands, the results and the conclusions they reached. The deadline for each report is one week after the seminar day in question. The reports may be written in either English or in Norwegian.
Teacher
Reading
R. H. Baayen, Analysing Linguistic Data: A Practical Introduction to Statistics using R (Cambridge University Press, 1st edition, 2009).
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