BCS Written Statistics study guide
BCS Written Statistics · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The BCS Written Statistics examination is the statistics component of Bangladesh's BCS written stage, taken by candidates who have cleared the preliminary screening and are competing for cadre posts in the Bangladesh Civil Service. It is a descriptive, essay-type paper: instead of selecting among options, you write out derivations, proofs, worked numerical solutions and structured discussion answers under time pressure. The BCS Written Statistics study guide has 8 sections and about 2,256 words.
01Probability Theory and Probability Distributions
You must be fluent with the axioms of probability, conditional probability, independence, and Bayes' theorem, and with the standard distributions: binomial, Poisson, geometric, hypergeometric, uniform, normal, exponential, gamma, and their means and variances. Know when a distribution is the right model: counts of rare events (Poisson), fixed number of trials with constant success probability (binomial), sampling without replacement (hypergeometric), waiting times (geometric/exponential).
288 words, about 1 min02Statistical Inference: Estimation and Hypothesis Testing
Know point estimation properties: unbiasedness, consistency, efficiency, and sufficiency. Understand method of moments, maximum likelihood, and the Cramér–Rao lower bound.
299 words, about 1 min03Experimental Design and Analysis of Variance
Understand the principles of experimental design: randomisation, replication, and blocking. Know completely randomised designs, randomised block designs, factorial designs, and split-plot designs.
301 words, about 2 min04Sampling Techniques and Survey Methodology
Know probability sampling methods: simple random sampling, systematic sampling, stratified sampling, cluster sampling, and multistage sampling, plus their estimators and variances. Understand sampling and non-sampling error, sampling frames, coverage, nonresponse, and weighting.
262 words, about 1 min05Regression Analysis and Multivariate Methods
Understand simple and multiple linear regression: the least squares criterion, interpretation of coefficients, the coefficient of determination R², adjusted R², standard errors, t-tests for coefficients, and the overall F-test. Know the Gauss–Markov assumptions and the consequences of their violation: heteroscedasticity, autocorrelation, multicollinearity, and specification error.
272 words, about 1 min06Time Series Analysis and Forecasting
Know the components of a time series: trend, seasonal, cyclical, and irregular. Understand stationarity, autocorrelation and partial autocorrelation functions, and the classical models: moving average, exponential smoothing (simple, Holt, Holt–Winters), and ARIMA (autoregressive, integrated, moving average).
275 words, about 1 min07Demographic and Official Statistics
Understand the core demographic measures: crude birth and death rates, age-specific rates, total fertility rate, life expectancy, infant mortality, and standardised mortality ratios. Know the difference between crude and standardised rates and why direct and indirect standardisation matter when comparing populations with different age structures.
296 words, about 1 min08Statistical Computing and Data Analysis
Understand the workflow of a statistical analysis: data acquisition, cleaning, exploratory analysis, modelling, diagnostics, and reporting. Know reproducibility practices: scripts, version control, documented seeds for random number generation, and literate programming.
263 words, about 1 min