10 free courses to learn more about statistics

Here are 10 totally free courses on statistics you can take on your own time to help you learn, improve and hone your stats knowledge (See my post of Jan. 20, 2007: statistics with 28 references.). Whether you just want to brush up on your statistics knowledge or learn something new about it altogether, you don’t have to spend lots of money and time taking a class at a nearby college. Instead, take some free courses from some of the most prestigious institutions in the U.S. instead.

1. Applied Statistics: This course from MIT will teach you the basics of statistics and data analysis, but you’ll need to have a little familiarity with calculus and linear algebra beforehand. (MIT)
2. Introduction to Probability and Statistics: If you don’t remember much from your stats class, consider this course as a refresher. It’ll cover the basics from probability models to linear regression. (MIT)
3. Mathematical Statistics: This is an upper level course that focuses on topics like decision theory, estimation, confidence intervals, and hypothesis testing. (MIT)
4. Statistics Learning Club: Check out this site to learn and discuss statistics with a wide variety of students and workers from other professions. (OpenLearn)
5. Statistical Reasoning: This is the first part in a two course series of classes that are focused on using understanding statistical data from studies—especially in the health care field though the course can be applied in other fields as well. (JHSPH)
6. Statistical Learning Theory: Here you can address statistics in machine learning algorithms that use statistics as a basis. (MIT)
7. Introduction to Statistical Method in Economics: Through this course you’ll learn some of the basic ways in which statistics is applied in economic situations. (MIT)
8. Finding Information in Mathematics and Statistics: Here you’ll cover the bare essentials of what you need to do to successfully extract important information from statistical data. (OpenLearn)
9. Quantitative Reasoning and Statistical Method for Planning: Even if you’re not planning on doing any city planning, this course offers a wide range of statistical education from the basic to the advanced. (MIT)
10. Nonparametrics and Robustness: This course is for individuals who want a more advanced take on statistics, focusing on order statistics, ranks and general distribution using methods developed in the early to mid 20th century. (MIT)

This post was contributed by guest author Hannah Watson, who writes about university online courses. She welcomes your feedback.

I thought to gather my general posts about statistics that have appeared since my first metapost on the topic, above (See my post of March 23, 2007: statistical moments; April 22, 2007: 12 comments on statistics for lawyers; March 20, 2007: selectively chosen data; Feb. 7, 2008: Law of Large Numbers; May 28, 2007: Five Percent Trimmed Mean; Sept. 5, 2007: probability-weighted sample; Feb. 9, 2008: content analysis; Feb. 17, 2008 #4: machine learning; Oct. 7, 2008 #2: LIBOR and top/bottom quartiles dropped; Nov. 16, 2008 #1: probability compared to statistics; Feb. 24, 2009: power laws explained; Feb. 24, 2009: power laws applied, with references; May 28, 2009: h-index; June 15, 2009: Poisson distribution; June 26, 2009: Monte Carlo explained; July 1, 2009 #1: F-statistics; and July 30, 2009: cluster analysis.).