Welcome to the STAtistics Zone

(Statistics, Period B)
Web address shortcut for this page: http://www.modd.net/1011stat

Are you nervous when you see NCWEE? concerned when you see CIRC? perturbed when you see PBC? Visit Mr. Hansen’s fabled abbreviations page to make sense of those cryptic markings you see on your papers.

 

Schedule at a Glance (see archives for older entries)
Written assignments should follow the HW guidelines. Enter your scores here.
Recurring Assignment: Each Wednesday from 9/15/2010 through 12/8/2010, there may be a discussion or a graded open-notes quiz on the most recent “Quick Study” column in the Washington Post Health section.

 

Th 5/26/011

In class: MPQ.

After class, Ousmane passed on the 8th round (a new STAtistics record). Congratulations! All students except for one have now passed.

 

F 5/27/011

Last day of school.

 

Th 6/2/011

Final Examination, 2:00 p.m., Steuart 201-202.

Any student who has not yet passed the Must-Pass Quiz is required to attend, since you will not have a B average (80%) or above until you have put the MPQ to rest. We will continue, as long as necessary, until every student has passed. Failure is not an option!

 

Sun 6/5/011

Update, 8:27 p.m.

All 19 students have now satisfied all of their deficiencies, except for group 1 (Nick R-S, Justin, and Dominique), whose project is missing a raw data table. However, this will be a relatively minor point penalty. Grades have to be posted by 8:00 a.m. tomorrow, so this is it for averaging the grades.

Mr. Hansen’s e-mail is apparently down at the moment. Please see the contact information if you wish to make contact by cell phone or voice mail.

 

 

Essential Links:
--
STA School Handbook
-- College Board: AP Statistics Course Description
-- Our old textbook’s site has online quizzes and some useful links
-- RVLS (Rice Virtual Lab in Statistics): One of the best sites anywhere for statistics! Here you’ll find a complete college statistics course (complete with clickable glossary and great case studies), simulations, and some excellent analysis tools.
-- Virtual Laboratories in Probability and Statistics (University of Alabama at Huntsville)
-- StatCrunch 3.0 (formerly WebStat): An on-line statistical computing package (requires Java)
-- How to study statistics (written by a professor at the University of Central Florida, but the ideas are valid for our class)
-- Eric Weisstein’s World of Mathematics: a monstrously huge hyperlinked reference
-- The Must-Pass Quiz for Statistics: doubles as a review for the AP exam

TI-83 Links:
--
CINT (converts confidence interval from interval notation to the more convenient “estimate ± m.o.e.” format)
-- INVT (inverse t) program written by Mr. Hansen and the Class of 1999
-- CHISQGOF (Chi-Square Goodness of Fit) program also written by Mr. Hansen and the Class of 1999
-- CSDELUXE (Chi-Square Deluxe): combines CHISQGOF and STAT TESTS C into one package; written by Mr. Hansen for the Class of 2003
-- Modifications to SCATRBOX program so that it returns the LSRL equation at the end (follow-on to a stat teacher workshop I attended on 12/5/2001)
-- David Pachner’s statistical test and confidence interval files for the TI-83 (added 4/16/2001; not reviewed by Mr. Hansen for accuracy)
-- TI-83 programs from Texas Instruments

Philosophical Links:
-- In praise of Bayes: a very readable overview of the tension between the standard (“frequentist”) approach to probability and the Bayesian view

Controversial Links:
-- Does an elite college really pay? Article addresses the issue of whether you would do better financially if you simply invested the difference in tuition price.
-- Does traditional hypothesis testing actually make sense? Article questions whether the entire second semester of our course is a waste of time . . .
-- Are law schools cooking their ranking statistics? Every high school statistics student should read this (and maybe a second time, four years later).

Fun Links:
-- Guessing correlation coefficients by eye
-- Another correlation game (takes longer to load, but allows you to achieve fame if you score in the top 20 worldwide)
-- Photos from our 5/20/99 field trip to the National Cryptologic Museum at the NSA
-- Huge Internet gallery of statistics jokes (warning: many are excellent, but some are dangerously lame)
-- Average age at death for rock stars is 36.9 (vs. 75.8 for the overall population). . . this site is religiously oriented (and apparently sincere), but the reasoning process is seriously flawed. Can you find the problem?
-- Chance Database Welcome Page (this is the link cited in the 4/4/99 Washington Post Unconventional Wiz column)
-- Accident statistics (the taxicab problem)
-- Psychological probability quiz
-- Marilyn is Wrong! (a truly great site, even though it doesn’t seem to include Dr. Morse’s response to Marilyn yet)
-- Male sweat may be good for women’s health (a scholarly article with p- and t-values from 2003, plus an abstract in 2007)
-- Lying with statistics
-- One of the biggest marketing blunders of all time: the New Coke fiasco
-- More fun links on Mr. Hansen’s home page

Serious Links (click here)

Extra Credit (please see me if interested):
-- American Statistical Association poster or project competition, deadline 4/1/2009
-- Washington Statistical Society Curtis Jacobs Memorial Prize, deadline 5/18/2009
-- Other extra credit options are available under the Fun Links at modd.net (see Mathcross Puzzles)

Group Projects (1998 onward):
Exploratory Data Analysis
-- Assignment (2005-06)
-- Results (1998-99)
-- Results (1999-2000)
-- Results (2000-01)
-- Results (2005-06)
Opinion Survey
-- Assignment (2000-01)
-- Results (1999-2000)
-- Results (2000-01)
Experimental Design and Execution
-- Assignment (2000-01)
-- Results (1998-99)
-- Results (2000-01)
Pairs Project on How to Lie With Statistics and P-value Calculations
-- Assignment (2000-01)
-- List of Partners (2000-01)
Critique of a Scientific Article
-- Assignment
AP Review
-- D period (1998-99)
-- F period (1998-99)

Test #1 (Chapters 1-2 plus §3.1 of old textbook), Sept. 2000:
-- Test #1

Old Test #1 (Introduction through Section 2.2 of old old textbook):
--
Study guide
-- Test #1D--has a residual plot question not found in the F period version
-- Test #1F

Test #2, Oct. 1998:
-- Mr. Hansen’s study guide
-- Eric Love’s study guide (1/12/1999 revised version)
-- Test #2 (merged version, with comments)

Test #3 (Chapter 5) for 1999-2000
-- Answers to practice test (the practice test was handed out in hard copy form on 11/15/1999)
-- Take-home portion distributed 11/16/1999, due 11/17/1999

Old Test #3 (Chapter 4 of old old textbook):
-- Study guide
-- Test #3 (merged version)
-- Answer key

Test #4 (Sections 5.1, 5.2, 6.1 of old old textbook):
-- Study guide
-- Test #4D
-- Test #4F

Test #4 (Chapters 7 and 8 of old textbook: random variables, binomial & geometric distributions):
-- Actual test, 1/29/2004

Test #5 (Sections 6.2, 6.3, 7.1 of old old textbook):
-- Study guide
-- Practice test
-- Answer key for practice test (incl. correction to #18 suggested by C. Muller)
-- Test #5 (merged version)

Test #5 (Sections 7.2 through 9.1 of old textbook):
-- Actual test, 2/6/2002

Test #6 (Sections 7.1-7.3 of old old textbook):
-- Practice test
-- Answer key for practice test
-- Test #6D, with answer key

Test #6 (Chapters 9 and 10 of old textbook):
-- Actual test, 3/7/2002

Test #7 (Sections 8.1-8.3 of old old textbook, plus Chi-Square GOF):
-- Answer key for sample test problems
-- In-class portion
-- Take-home portion

Test #8 (Section 9.1 of old old textbook, plus Geometric Probability Distributions):
-- Take-home test due Wednesday 4/28/1999
-- Answer key (not yet released)

AP Exam Review
-- Real sample AP questions from the College Board
-- TI-83 Function Summary
-- TI-83 STAT TESTS Summary, including the assumptions you need to check
-- PHA(S)TPC procedures, a systematic way of performing statistical tests and calculating confidence intervals
-- LSRL Top Ten
-- Normal vs. Binomial: What are the hallmarks and differences? (Includes many example problems, with solutions.)
-- Formula sheet markup guide
-- Guide to standard error formulas (third page of the AP formula sheet)

Question of the day: 12/15/1998

Preview of quiz for Wednesday, 11/18/1998


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Last updated: 05 Jun 2011