Course Information

Most students that struggle with statistics fall behind at some point; avoid this like the plague. One day at a time, statistics is easy! If you blow off a few days, it can become much more challenging. The basic principle of learning anything is persistence.  Statistics is no different.  Go to class, ask questions, read the text, do the homework, and you will learn statistics.

Goals for the Course
Upon completing Introduction to Statistics, students will:

• Have an understanding of the main ideas of statistics and useful skills for working with data.
• Know a variety of methods for analyzing, describing, and displaying data.
• Understand concepts related to the proper production of data and experimental design, such as randomization and comparative analysis.
• Master the language, meaning and calculations of statistical inference.
• Be able to meaningfully respond to and interpret the ever increasing statistical results appearing in our modern media.

Grades

Quizzes and Homework
We will collect homework assignments regularly, and there will be a quiz each Wednesday as well. Recording "just the answer" will receive little or no credit. You should show and/or explain your work on all assignments for this class. You are encouraged to work together on homework assignments, but this does NOT mean copying the work of others nor answers from a solution set.

Activities
We will complete several activities (mostly in groups), some in-class, others may be out of class. These activities will involve the current topics of the course and normally replace a lecture.

Class Participation and Attendance
There will be 5% of your final grade based on your class participation (asking questions, taking part in discussions, contributing to your group in activities, etc.) and attendance. We will determine your score for this 5%. You are responsible for all of the material covered in class each day, even if you are not present.

Course Grades
Grades, based on the letter, or A, A-, B+, B, B-, . . . system, will be based on a weighted curve of the points in the class. The curve used will be the traditional 100-93 A, 92-90 A-, 89-88 B+, etc. (or an easier curve). The breakdown of weights in the class is given below. There is no extra credit for this class. You are encouraged to work together on group assignments (including homework), but copying answers of others (including those in the back of the text) will result in no credit.  We expect you to uphold Central's Academic Honesty Policy given below.
 

Plagiarism, or copying answers from other people or books without citing the source is a serious offense and will result in no credit for the work.  It is OK to discuss your answers with other groups on group assignments, but  the work you turn in must be your own.

Central College's Academic Honesty Policy
"Academic dishonesty is defined as behavior that is inappropriate for academic pursuits, including plagiarizing, cheating and other such dishonest activities.  Some examples of misconduct are

• presenting other's work as your own:  copying homework or test answers from other students, unauthorized collaboration on class activities, using unauthorized materials in a test, having someone else write your paper or test,
• improper computer usage:  inappropriate or illegal use of computers, including such things as pirating of programs or files, unauthorized access to files or passwords, altering records, and/or damaging programs
• plagiarism and/or misuse of ideas from other sources: deliberately using or adopting materials, ideas, or images produced by another person and taking credit for them, regardless of the format in which they originally appeared, including books, journals, web pages, video or audio recordings, and/or computer files, accessing or using privileged information without authorization, quoting, paraphrasing, and/or copying materials without footnoting or proper attribution, using privileged information without authorization.

Class Materials

TI-83 Materials

The TI-83 (or TI-83 Plus) calculator is required for this course. It performs many useful statistical calculations with the press of a button. No prior knowledge of the TI-83 is assumed but the TI-83 will be utilized extensively in this course. The links below point to files designed to help explain some features of this pocket computer. The first two links are introductory in nature and designed to help familiarize new users with some basic features of the TI-83. The remaining links will only make sense as we progress through the semester.

Introduction : A general introduction to the TI-83 calculator.

Graphing : Several basic operations related to graphing functions are covered in this document.

Normal Calculations : Probabilities associated with normal distributions are covered.

Linear Regression : Correlation, scatterplots and least squares linear regression are looked at briefly on the TI-83.

Confidence intervals and significance or hypothesis tests with the TI-83.

Activities

Here is a pdf file that contains the first few sections of the text.
Day one information sheet.
Mean and median activity on rowers' weights.
Correlation and association activity.
Per capita TVs and life expectancy; an activity that looks at causation versus correlation.
Sampling with M&Ms, population data and class data for the sampling activity.
Confidence Intervals, there calculation and some mis-interpretations. Class data to go with the intervals.
One vs two sample tests activity, where we look at which type of test (one-sample or two-sample) is most appropriate.

Exams

Schedule