# Notes on scale and uncertainty in civic life These notes are supplementary for a course in introductory probability and statistics, with an eye towards informing practical evaluation of scientific claims made in public discourse. In contrast to traditional approaches, we start with the structure of decision-making (through statistical hypothesis tests) and then follow up with supporting mathematical theory. ### Making decisions in the face of uncertainty [[1.1 The language of hypothesis testing]] [[1.2 Building a good hypothesis test]] [[1.3 The language of probability distributions]] [[1.4 Models derived from Bernoulli trials]] (Under construction) [[1.4x The power of "at least one"]] (Under construction) [[1.5 The limitations of the hypothesis testing framework]] (Under construction) *Keywords for Unit 1* #hypothesis-test #null-hypothesis #alternative-hypothesis #rejection-criteria #type-I-error #type-II-error #significance #power #critical-value #find-the-95-test #p-value #bernoulli #binomial #at-least-one-test ### How random is that? [[2.1 What does it mean to be average?]] [[2.2 What makes a deviation standard?]] [[2.3 Adding and multiplying random variables]] [[2.4 The miracle of X-bar]] [[3.1 What's so normal about Gauss's distribution?]] [[3.2 Mining uncertainty for profit]] [[3.3 Plus or minus; give or take]] [[3.4 Significance, power, and p-values, revisited]] ### Independence, Correlation, and Sometimes Causation [[4.1 Conditional Probability and Independence]] [[4.2 Bayes and the interpretation of (tests for) maladies]] [[4.3 Testing for independence]] [[4.4 Characterizing dependence]] ### Statistics in Practice ~~ more to come ~~