MATH200/ME50, Statistics
Spring 2012, T 6:30–9:20, room 224 (Stan Brown)
Schedule and Assignments Your To-Do ListSpring 2012, T 6:30–9:20, room 224 (Stan Brown)
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Schedule and Assignments Your To-Do ListThe handouts are marked with helpful symbols. A full explanation of the symbols is available, and most browsers will also show a “tool tip” if you just mouse over the symbol.
Recommended Statistics Books
UCLA Statistics Case Studies — real-life applications you can work yourself (accessed 2012-03-25)
You can’t trust Excel to do critical statistics. See these
papers by
David
Heiser (accessed 2012-03-25) and
P.J. Wells (accessed 2012-03-25). (Excel 2010 has some new statistics functions that may address the problem. I haven’t seen any definitive papers yet.) On-line statistics courses:
Guide to Chapter 1 Your To-Do List Thoughts on Opening Night Advice from Your Fellow Students 
Viewer’s Guide
to Against All Odds Part 1, “What Is
Statistics?” (for some sections)
Practice quiz and Solutions Random.org
has lots of true random number generators, including numbers, coin
flips, and dice rolls.
In class we mentioned the 1936 fiasco of a presidential election poll.
Read about it at
Classic Polling Surprises (accessed 2012-03-25) and
Introduction to Polling (accessed 2012-03-25).
The original Literary Digest article can be found at Landon in a Landslide: The Poll that Changed Polling (accessed 2012-03-25).
In class we mentioned that
Fox News viewers know less about the world than people who watch
no news at all. Can you conclude that this is because
they watch Fox News? Why or why not?
The relevant studies are Misinformation and the 2010 Election (accessed 2012-03-25) at the University of Maryland, and Some News Leaves People Knowing Less at Fairleigh Dickinson University (accessed 2012-03-25).
Alternating Treatments (accessed 2012-03-25)
gives lots of examples why you need to randomize your samples. What’s wrong with surveys where respondents select themselves?
See Web Polls (accessed 2012-03-25). The Joy of Stats video: Hans Rosling shows lots of great ways to present data (accessed 2012-03-25). Don’t miss the segment “200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes”, also available separately (accessed 2012-03-25). self-referential graphs The Best Stats You’ve Ever Seen video: Hans Rosling uses descriptive stats to explode the myth of First World and Third World (accessed 2012-03-25).
MATH200A Program part 1 can be used to make histograms, and
MATH200B Program part 2 graphs time series. ticalc.org has five programs to make pie charts. Though I haven't evaluated them in depth, PIEGRAPH.ZIP looks most interesting based on the screen shots. STEMLEAF.ZIP (1 KB) is a TI-83/84 program that makes stemplots Charles Minard’s famous graph of
Napoleon’s Moscow campaign (accessed 2012-03-25)
Guide to Chapter 3 Sample Statistics on TI-83/84 —
mean, median, standard deviation, variance, and five-number
summary MATH200A Program part 2 for box-whisker plots Empirical Rule Practice Problems
with solutions
Practice quiz and Solutions what to do about Outliers (accessed 2012-03-25) Standard Deviation (accessed 2012-03-25)
by Steve Simon, with pictures and interpretation Empirical Relation Between Mean, Median And Mode (accessed 2012-03-25)
A more technical version is Mean, Median, and Skew: Correcting a Textbook Rule (accessed 2012-03-25).
Degrees of Freedom (accessed 2012-03-25)
tells why we divide by n−1, not n, to compute standard deviation.
“Variance” from David C. Ullrich (dated 12 June 2006 and
archived here (accessed 2012-03-25)) explains this
based on the difference between sample variance and population
variance. Defining Quartiles (accessed 2012-03-25). Measures of Shape: Skewness and Kurtosis MATH200B Program part 1 computes skewness and kurtosis Guide to Chapter 4 Correlation and Regression
completely replaces Chapter 4 of your textbook. It
includes these handouts: Scatter Plot, Correlation, and Regression on TI-83/84 —
There’s also a version for the TI-89 and TI-92 Finding ŷ from a Regression on TI-83/84 —
There’s also a version for the TI-89 and TI-92 Practice quiz and Solutions Cartoons about correlation and causation are
here (accessed 2009-12-28) and
here (accessed 2012-03-25). If correlation is not Causation (accessed 2012-03-25),
how do we know that smoking causes cancer? R-squared mean? (accessed 2012-03-25) Least Squares — the Gory Details —
Where do those formulas come from? MATH200B Program part 6 for inferences about linear
correlation Under Chapter 12 are several more inferences you can make about correlation and regression. extended examples of probability:
Probability of Shared Birthdays,
We the Jury ...,
and
Medical False Positives and False Negatives False positives and the war on terror, by Sam Savage and Howard Wainer:
False Positives Calculator
and
explanation (PDF) (accessed 2012-03-25) For more about the first-digit phenomenon, see
Benford’s Law at Mathworld (accessed 2012-03-25). One way it’s used to detect cheating is at Following Benford’s Law, or Looking Out for No. 1 (accessed 2012-03-25). Guide to Chapter 6 MATH200A Program part 3 to compute binomial probability; or Binomial Probability Distribution on TI-83/84 if you don’t have the program.
Swain v Alabama (accessed 2012-03-25) —
racial bias in jury selection Practice quiz and Solutions MATH200A Program part 1 for histograms of the general discrete PD and
MATH200A Program part 4 for histograms of the binomial PD Guide to Chapter 7 Normal Calculations on TI-83/84 or TI-89 section 1 MATH200A Program part 5
determines whether a distribution is normal Practice quiz and Solutions Normal Distribution by Steve Simon — an overview (accessed 2012-03-25) Guide to Chapter 8 Normal Calculations on TI-83/84 or TI-89 section 2 Sampling Distributions — Summary Sample Variability Lab (Roulette) Viewer’s Guide
to Against All Odds Part 18, “The Sample Mean and
Control Charts” Practice quiz and Solutions The Behavior of the Sample Mean (accessed 2012-03-25) — pictures show how sample means are distributed and why that distribution is different from the shape of the population. Guide to Chapter 9 MATH200A Program part 6 computes sample size Practice quiz and Solutions
Difference of Two Proportions in Statistics (accessed 2012-03-25) answers this question for tests of one proportion as well. We don’t do it in this class, but if
you want to know how to compute confidence intervals about σ,
the population standard deviation, see Inferences about One Population Standard Deviation
or MATH200B Program part 5.
Confidence Interval with Zero Events by Steve Simon (accessed 2012-03-25)
gives the “rule of three” for calculating a confidence interval when np̂ = 0. How Big a Sample Do I Need? explains
how to find necessary sample size by formula, for those who don’t have
MATH200A part 6 or would
like to know how the calculations are done. Inferential Statistics: Basic Cases Triage: Which Inferential Stats Case Should I Use? Hypothesis testing a/k/a significance testing has a language and philosophy of its own, but once you get it you’ll find it’s the same for Chapters 10 through 12.
The following handouts
replace sections 10.1 and 10.2 of your textbook, and they're
included in Hypothesis Tests listed under Chapter 10 below: Look at this one after you’ve spent a week or two on hypothesis tests: Top 10 Mistakes of Hypothesis Tests Guide to Chapter 10 Hypothesis Tests
completely replaces Chapter 10 of your textbook. It
includes the “language and philosophy”
handouts listed above under Chapters 9–12:
Inference, as well as these
two handouts that replace sections 10.3 and 10.4: In-class exercise (some sections):
M&Ms Lab: Inferences for One Population
Practice quiz and Solutions Is Statistics Hard? by Gerald Dallal (accessed 2012-03-25)
and
Logic of Hypothesis Testing, part of HyperStat (accessed 2012-03-25). Sifting the evidence—what‘s wrong with significance tests? by Sterne and Smith (accessed 2012-03-25). Why Most Published Research Findings Are False by John Ioannidis (accessed 2012-03-25). If you find the article heavy going, just scroll down to read the example in Box 1 and then the corollaries that follow. You can also do hypothesis tests about σ, the
population s.d.: see MATH200B Program part 5 or Inferences about One Population Standard Deviation. Guide to Chapter 11 MATH200A Program part 6 computes sample size the Worked-Out HT and CI from Chapter 11 Class in PDF format
additional examples of Confidence Intervals for Two Populations Practice quiz and Solutions List Operations for Paired t Test on TI-83/84 Number Needed to Treat —
statistical significance and practical significance, with examples
from medical studies (accessed 2012-03-25) Guide to Chapter 12 MATH200A Program part 7 does the calculations for section 12.1.
(If you have a TI-89/92, use Testing Goodness of Fit on TI-89.) Practice quiz and Solutions Chi-Square in Randomized Experiments: the Physicians' Health Study (accessed 2012-03-25) — scroll down to that section
Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer
Confidence Intervals for Goodness of Fit, with Excel
workbooks Extra casesThese are not part of the course syllablus, but are included for those who would like to learn more.
Inferential Statistics Cases contains additional
cases beyond the ones required for class Inferences about Linear Correlation, with Excel
workbook Inferences about Linear Regression, with
Excel workbook Inferences about One Population Standard Deviation, with Excel
workbook All three of the above, and more, are
included in MATH200B Program — Extra Statistics Utilities for TI-83/84 with a downloadable
TI-83/84 program. One-Way ANOVA Practice Problems for Statistics and
Solutions to Practice Problems for Statistics TI-83/84 Troubleshooting E notation (accessed 2012-03-25) by Steve Simon Course DebriefingThis page is used in instruction at Tompkins Cortland Community College in Dryden, New York; it’s not an official statement of the College. Please visit www.tc3.edu/instruct/sbrown/ to report errors or ask to copy it.
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