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2025-2026 / GEOG0666-1

Introduction to the statistical approach to town planning

Duration

15h Th, 15h Pr

Number of credits

 Master in urban planning and territorial development, professional focus in post-industrial and rurban territories3 crédits 

Lecturer

Mario Cools

Language(s) of instruction

French language

Organisation and examination

Teaching in the first semester, review in January

Schedule

Schedule online

Units courses prerequisite and corequisite

Prerequisite or corequisite units are presented within each program

Learning unit contents

In this course, the students will receive an introduction to basic concepts of statistical inference:

  • Hypothesis testing with respect to means and proportions (1 sample t-test, 2 sample t-test, and their non-parametric alternatives
  • Correlation tests/independence tests
  • Anova / Kruskal-Wallis
  • Regression techniques
Besides, the course focuses on the interpretation of the output of the aforementioned tests using the open-source package R.

Learning outcomes of the learning unit

The student will be able to interpret output from statistical packages (in terms of basic statistical inference, hypothesis testing, and regression modelling).

The student will be able to implement a series of statistical datasets and formulate the main conclusions in a report.

Prerequisite knowledge and skills

Planned learning activities and teaching methods

6 mixed theory/practice lectures of 3 hours

Since the theoretical concepts are immediately applied in the software package R, bring your laptop to the course is essential for the course

Mode of delivery (face to face, distance learning, hybrid learning)

Face-to-face course

Course materials and recommended or required readings

Platform(s) used for course materials:
- eCampus

Exam(s) in session

Any session

- In-person

written exam ( open-ended questions )

Written work / report


Further information:

The course evaluation exists in two parts:

  • An individual project where the student uses statistical software to formulate an answer to different research questions (35%)
  • A written (closed book) exam where the student needs to interpret statistical output (65%)

Work placement(s)

Organisational remarks and main changes to the course

Given that the lectures focus on the practical aspects of using R for basic hypothesis tests, the time available to cover theoretical concepts is very limited. Therefore, video capsules on the theoretical concepts will be made available for students wishing to explore these aspects further.

To ensure that students can effectively apply the techniques taught during the courses, the code snippets and outputs are made available in English. This also facilitates the retrieval of additional information and help online.

Contacts

Association of one or more MOOCs