Técnicas Cuantitativas I

Grado en ADE and Grado en Economía — Universidad de Granada

← Back to Teaching

A first-year undergraduate course covering descriptive statistics, probability theory, and an introduction to time series — the quantitative foundations students need before tackling econometrics. Hands-on labs in Excel and R.

Topics

  1. Univariate analysis. Descriptive statistics for a single variable — central tendency, dispersion, shape; histograms and boxplots; data exploration in Excel and R.

  2. Bivariate analysis. Joint behaviour of two variables — covariance, correlation, contingency tables; the simple linear regression as a descriptive tool.

  3. Probability. Set-theoretic foundations and axioms; conditional probability and Bayes’ theorem; independence; combinatorics.

  4. Random variables. Discrete and continuous random variables; expectation, variance, moments; joint and conditional distributions.

  5. Distributions. Common probability models — Bernoulli, Binomial, Poisson, Normal, Student’s \(t\), \(\chi^2\), \(F\) — and their applications.

  6. Index numbers. Price and quantity indices (Laspeyres, Paasche, Fisher); inflation; chained vs fixed-base indices.

  7. Time series. Components (trend, seasonality, cycle, irregular); decomposition; moving averages; smoothing.

Appendices — mathematical and statistical prerequisites · statistical tables.

Course logistics

  • Programme. Grado en Economía · Grado en Administración y Dirección de Empresas
  • Year. First-year undergraduate
  • Language of instruction. English and Spanish (separate groups)
  • Software. Microsoft Excel and R via RStudio
  • Assessment. Continuous assessment (problem sets and Excel/R labs) plus a final exam.

Materials

Lecture notes, beamer slides, problem sets with solutions, and per-topic Excel and R lab scripts.