Course overview
IAW University of Bern Spring Semester odd years
Statistics has become an indispensable tool in prehistoric archaeology. This course is intended on the one hand to give the participants the skills to understand and reproduce statistical analyses in literature and on the other hand to enable them to use such analyses for their scientific work themselves.
Basic statistical concepts will be explained and simple uni- and bivariate methods of descriptive, explorative and inductive statistics will be presented. An important part is the practical application of these methods. This is to be carried out with the help of the statistics software R, a open source and free-of-charge, yet extremely powerful computing environment.
The course is suitable for students of all semesters; no statistical knowledge or expertise in special computer programs is required. It consists of lectures, practical exercises, and tutorials. Assessment will be based on practical assignments and a final exam (theoretical and/or practical).
The course will be taught in English.
Key dates
18.02.25 First Sitting 25.03.25 no class 22.04.25 no class 06.05.25 no class 20.05.25 no class 27.05.25 Test
Learning objectives
Students are familiar with basic statistical procedures and can apply them to archaeological case studies. Furthermore, they are familiar with the basic usage of the statistics programme R.
Instructors
Martin Hinz
Senior Researcher (Oberassistent), IAW Bern
martin.hinz@unibe.ch
Meeting times & locations
Lectures
Tuesday from 12:15-14:00, Seminarraum 016, Mittelstrasse 43, 3012 Bern
The course will be held in presence. The teaching content is additionally provided by means of videos and other material. Students are encouraged to work on this independently and to deepen it if necessary. I will respond as quickly as possible to questions sent to me via email.
Your own computer equipment is recommended. If you have any problems in this regard, please let me know in advance. We will work exclusively with free software, if possible with open source solutions.
Office hours
to be announced
Pre-requisites
None except motivation and the desire to learn, as well as the readiness to work independently.