Statistics That Actually Applies
Inference, uncertainty and the questions your data cannot answer
Created by Priya Raghunathan
What you will learn
- Express uncertainty properly with intervals rather than a single number
- Choose a test that matches your design, not your habit
- Interpret a p-value accurately, and explain it to a non-specialist
- Spot confounding, selection bias and survivorship in real datasets
- Use regression for explanation without over-claiming causation
- Design an experiment that can answer the question asked
Course content
14 sections · 114 lectures · 18h total length
- What this course covers, and what it does notPreview04:00
- How to get the most out of itPreview05:00
- Setting up and downloading the exercise files06:00
- Distributions and what they assumePreview04:00
- Distributions and what they assume in detail12:00
- A closer look at distributions and what they assume07:00
- Worked example: distributions and what they assume15:00
- Where distributions and what they assume goes wrong11:00
- Exercise: distributions and what they assume06:00
- Distributions and what they assume in practice14:00
- Two approaches to distributions and what they assume10:00
- Distributions and what they assume — questions from previous students14:00
- Reviewing your work on distributions and what they assume10:00
Topics covered
Requirements
- Comfortable manipulating data in Python or R
- School-level algebra
- No prior statistics course needed
Description
Statistics taught as formulae produces people who can run a t-test and cannot say what it means. This course inverts that: every method is introduced through the decision it supports and the assumption that, when broken, makes the answer worthless.
Your instructor
Data scientist working in health research
Priya moved from academic statistics into applied health data and has never lost the habit of asking what a number actually measures. Expect a lot of attention to how data is collected before any model appears.
Learner reviews
- 5 star82%
- 4 star16%
- 3 star2%
- 2 star1%
- 1 star1%
- ZKZoe K.5 February 2026
The instructor answers questions properly rather than pointing you at the documentation.
- PFPetra F.10 December 2025
Content is fine but it needs updating — a couple of the tools shown have changed since recording.
- SRSam R.16 April 2026
Exactly what I needed. It assumes you are an adult and does not over-explain.
- JZJonas Z.10 February 2026
The pacing is right. Nothing is padded out, and the exercises are short enough that I actually did them.
- NKNiall K.13 November 2025
Worth it for the section on common mistakes alone — I recognised two things I have been doing wrong for years.
- NLNiall L.12 March 2026
Good balance between theory and doing. I would have liked a couple more exercises, but that is a small complaint.
- DRDmitri R.6 January 2026
I came in knowing a bit and still learned plenty. The middle third is the strongest part.
- AZAisha Z.17 October 2025
Very practical. I applied something from module four at work the same week.
- AAAisha A.1 March 2026
Good course overall. Some of the earlier videos could do with re-recording — the audio is noticeably quieter.
Showing 9 of 2,231 reviews.
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