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W 9/7/011
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First day of school.
Synopsis of class: Definitions of mathematics, data, statistics, statistic,
and parameter, plus the one-sentence summary of our course, “We use statistics
to estimate parameters.” We also distinguished among quantitative data,
categorical data, and free-form (paragraph) data; only the first two are
suitable for our class.
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Th
9/8/011
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HW due:
1. Send Mr. Hansen a signed e-mail from the address you check most
frequently. See contact information.
2. Watch the Greek letter video.
3. Watch the Roman letter video.
4. Be prepared for a possible quiz over yesterday’s class content. (If you
miss a day, you are expected to get class notes from someone who attended.)
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F 9/9/011
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HW due:
1. Watch the Simpson’s Paradox video.
2. Be prepared for a possible quiz on the video and/or all material discussed
up to this point.
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M 9/12/011
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HW due:
1. Read “How to study
statistics” and make a few reading notes. (See the “HW guidelines” link
above for formatting instructions for your reading notes.)
2. Read pp. 1-15 (stop after first paragraph on p.15) in your textbook and
make a few reading notes. Note: Reading
notes are always required for textbook reading assignments unless an
exception is announced.
3. Identify each of the following as quantitative
data, categorical data, statistic, or parameter.
Write answers on your homework paper. For today’s assignment, you may omit
writing the questions.
(a) The median height of JV football students at STA is 62 inches.
(b) The standard deviation of household income in America is $13,900.
(c) Fred has red hair.
(d) In Mr. Hansen’s MODD class, there are 0 red-haired students.
(e) Brad is 5 feet, 9.5 inches tall.
(f) Nobody in HappyCal is confused about the
meaning of the word “calculus.”
(g) In a certain year of interest, 19,318 students nationwide took the AP
Calculus BC exam.
(h) Dennis had an A+ in 3-D art last semester.
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T 9/13/011
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HW due:
1. Watch Dr. Arthur
Benjamin’s video a second time. It’s short!
2. Read pp. 15-19 and the chapter review on pp. 24-25. (Reading notes are required,
as always. This reminder will probably not be included in future
assignments.)
3. Read the example paragraph below, not merely as an example but also for
the content found there. You are expected to know the four topic areas of AP
Statistics by heart.
4. Write Activity 1.3 on p. 24. Read the instructions carefully. An example
of a “meaningful paragraph” that includes the terms margin of error, confidence level, inferential statistics,
probability, and confidence
interval is given below as an example. Note that it is generally not
possible to use the terms in the order given if your goal is to make the
paragraph sound smooth and unforced. Remember, as your book says, a sequence
of sentences that just define the terms is not a meaningful paragraph.
The first part of our course is concerned with three broad topic areas:
exploratory data analysis, probability
(the study of randomness and long-run relative frequency), and experimental
design. In the second half of the course, we deal with the much more sophisticated
concept of inferential statistics, which
deals with using data and statistics computed from data to draw conclusions
about unknown parameters. We will typically compute a margin of error based on our sample size and the shape of the
purported distribution of the statistic. The centerline estimate of the
parameter, plus or minus the margin of
error, gives us a confidence
interval for the parameter of interest at whatever confidence level (typically 90% or 95%) has been specified in
advance.
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W 9/14/011
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HW due:
1. Catch up on all previously assigned HW.
2. Read pp. 27-31 in your textbook.
3. Read the Quick
Study article in yesterday’s Washington
Post. There will be an open-notes quiz on the article. Only handwritten
notes are permitted; no printout of the article itself is allowed.
Warning: It is possible, indeed
quite likely, that information from the textbook reading may be linked to the
Quick Study quiz. You should read the textbook as a way of enhancing your
reading, understanding, and questioning of the Quick Study article.
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Th
9/15/011
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HW due:
1. Read pp. 32-39.
2. Write #2.14 on p. 40.
3. Many, if not most, polls conducted by The
Independent and The Saint Albans
News are of no scientific value. Why not? Write a sentence or two.
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F 9/16/011
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HW due:
1. Read pp. 42-49.
2. Write #2.24 and #2.28 on pp. 41-42.
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M 9/19/011
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HW due: Before Tuesday, read pp. 51-54 and pp.
56-60.
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T 9/20/011
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HW due:
1. Read pp. 51-54 and pp. 56-60 if you have not already done so.
2. Review your class notes and e-mail a list of 2 or 3 possible “critical
thinking” test questions to Mr. Hansen before 8:00 a.m. today. Remember to
prefix your subject line with a double underscore ( __
) so that the message will not be rejected by the spam filter. Examples are
given below.
Sample question: Give 3 real-world examples of distributions, 1 each for a
distribution that is (a) essentially symmetric, (b) skew left, and (c) skew
right. For each example, explain why
the distribution has the shape you are claiming, and
estimate the population mean and median.
Sample question: Describe a situation in which single blinding is almost
certainly not sufficient, and describe how you would modify the experimental
design in order to improve the quality of the data gathered. Explain what
type of bias your improvement would eliminate.
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W 9/21/011
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Test on
Chapters 1 and 2, plus all material (including notation) discussed in class.
A sample test from 2000 is
available to give you a feeling for the difficulty and length you might
expect. We were using a different textbook back in those days. Your test may
include questions about Simpson’s Paradox, experimental design, types of
bias, types of sampling (simple, clustered, stratified), and other topics
that occur in a different order 11 years later.
Sam requested a more modern test. Here
is one from 2008, and
you should be able to answer most of the questions.
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Th
9/22/011
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HW due: Sleep and/or get caught up on previously
assigned problems. No additional work is due.
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F 9/23/011
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Form VI retreat (no class). Your assignment for Monday
will be posted by 3:00 p.m. today.
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M 9/26/011
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NOTE:
Class meets in MH-001 today.
HW due: Correct last week’s test until it is
100% correct. It is better if you write out a fresh set of answers on a blank
copy of the test, but if your corrections are minimal, it is acceptable to
mark them (using a different color of ink) on the test itself.
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T 9/27/011
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HW due: Read pp. 61-63, 75-83.
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W 9/28/011
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HW due:
1. Watch this
video in its entirety. If you were in class yesterday, you can
fast-forward through the first 5 minutes if you wish. The video shows a
technology your book does not mention: time series depicted through
animation.
2. Write #3.4 and #3.14 on pp. 84-87.
3. Read pp. 87-92.
4. Prepare for a quiz on the Quick
Study from yesterday’s Washington
Post. Remember, questions may ask you to relate the content of the
article to textbook readings and class discussions. (In other words, it is
not enough simply to be familiar with the content of the article.)
Handwritten notes are permitted during the quiz.
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Th
9/29/011
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HW due:
1. Read pp. 97-113.
2. Write #3.24 on p. 114, with the additional requirement that between parts (a)
and (b), you need to draw a relative frequency histogram. Throughout the
entire year, be sure to label your axes with words, units (if appropriate), and tick marks.
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F 9/30/011
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HW due:
Each group is to prepare an exploratory data analysis proposal consisting of
the following parts:
(a) A statement of the research question. (See example project ideas below,
or choose one of your own.)
(b) A summary and description of your methods. (For example, you could use a
sample survey or a census, and if you use sampling, you could use a
convenience sample, an SRS, a stratified random sample, or clustered
sampling.) Describe how you intend to gather your data and approximately how
long it will take.
(c) A brief statement of the types of patterns you hope to see or expect to
see. If you literally have no idea, then describe what sorts of chart types
and statistics you intend to produce as you look for interesting patterns in
the data.
You will have approximately a week and a half to gather the data and write a
report as a group. The only thing that is due Friday (today) is the initial
project proposal with parts (a), (b), and (c) as described above. Deadlines
for data table submission and draft and final reports will be decided after
all the projects have been discussed and tweaked.
Groups are as follows, with group leader names in boldface:
Group 1: Browning, Kieran, Sam
Group 2: Miles, Frederik, Mr. Hansen
Group 3: Bogdan, Nathan, Joe
Group 4: Matt, Karl, Steven
The group leader is responsible for submitting all group assignments. If the
group leader is absent for any reason, even for illness or injury, it is his
responsibility to deputize someone else to turn the assignment in on time.
The group leader is also required to write a 1- or 2-paragraph report as an
appendix to the final report; the group leader’s report will summarize what
each student contributed to the project and will recommend a splitout of points. The group project is worth 300
points, and although many group leaders since 1998 have recommended a
straight 100-100-100 split, there have also been many exceptions. If a group
member is a slacker or fails to show up for scheduled meetings, it is
entirely appropriate to recommend a lower score for him.
Final point decisions and final approval for all project concepts rest with
Mr. Hansen. In previous years, some projects have also required approval by
the STA administration.
Some project ideas:
1. How does the ratio of ring finger length to index finger length vary
between STA and NCS students?
2. In a long text of 50,000 or more words, what patterns are there in word
frequency? (Other variations: What patterns are there in word pairings or
phrases? Can writers be reliably distinguished from each other by
statistics?)
3. When subjects are asked to quickly write down a list of 100 fake coin
flips and make the list “as random as possible,” how likely are they to
include a run of 5 heads in a row or 5 tails in a row? How likely would a run
of 5 heads or 5 tails be if a subject actually flips a coin 100 times?
4. If a small piece of marked litter is purposefully placed in Marriott Hall,
how much time elapses (mean, median, Q1, Q3, etc.)
before it is moved or thrown away? Does the answer vary noticeably depending
on the starting location or time of day?
5. What does a time series of book bag litter look like? (Discuss what
location or locations you will monitor and with what frequency.)
6. How much faster is it to evacuate a building using double doors (for
example, at the 000 level of Marriott Hall) than it is if all the students
use a single door? Does the answer depend on whether an adult is holding one
or both doors open?
7. Can gender be guessed, with higher frequency than chance alone would
predict, from a handwriting sample? On average, are males better or worse
than females in this guessing game?
8. Who do STA students think will win the 2012 U.S. presidential election? (Note: This research question is
different from asking whom they support.)
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