Fall 2008, T 6:30–9:20, room 283B (Stan Brown)
Welcome! Please bookmark this page and check back here at least once a week, whenever you miss a class, or when new material is announced in class.
(See also broadcast email to the class. The latest was dated Oct 8.)
Oct 8: Reminder: the Shoe-Size Lab is due next Tuesday at 6:30 sharp. Please read and follow directions carefully.
Oct 7: Chapter 4 quiz solutions have been posted.
Older news is still available for viewing.
Course Schedule and Assignments (rev. Sep 9)
Sleep Lab (rev. Feb 10) Shoe-Size Lab (rev. Aug 3) ESP Lab (rev. Nov 6, 2007) Field project information:The 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.
Advice from Fall 2006 Students (rev. Dec 23, 2006)
and
Advice from Summer 2007 Students (rev. May 26)
Show Your Work! (rev. Aug 19, 2005)
Random.org
has lots of true random number generators, including numbers, coin
flips, and dice rolls. Read about the Literary Digest
polling fiasco for the 1936 presidential election (mentioned in class) at
Classic Polling Surprises (link verified 2008-08-31) and
Introduction to Polling (link verified 2008-08-31).
The original Literary Digest article can be found at
Landon in a Landslide:
The Poll that Changed Polling (link verified 2008-08-31). Alternating Treatments
(link verified 2008-08-31)
gives lots of examples why you need to randomize your samples. Web Polls (link verified 2008-08-31).
What Is a Survey? (link verified 2008-08-31),
edited by
Fritz Scheuren for the American Statistical Association
Frequency Histograms and Polygons the Easy Way on the TI-83/84 (rev. Sep 21), includes downloadable program Plotting Time Series on the TI-83/84 (rev. Sep 15, 2007) 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 (link verified 2008-08-31)
Descriptive Statistics of a Data Set on the TI-83/84 (rev. Oct 5) —
mean, median, standard deviation, five-number summary, and box-whisker plot what to do about Outliers (link verified 2008-08-31) Standard Deviation (link verified 2008-08-31)
by Steve Simon, with pictures and interpretation Empirical Relation Between Mean, Median And Mode (link verified 2008-08-31)
Degrees of Freedom (link verified 2008-08-31)
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) explains this
based on the difference between sample variance and population
variance. The way we find percentiles and quartiles in class is just one of the commonly accepted methods. You may be interested in Max Petzold’s A Comparison of Some Commonly Used Percentile Definitions (PDF, 102 KB) (link verified 2008-08-31). A simpler treatment is offered by Dr. Math in Defining Quartiles (link verified 2008-08-31). 
Skewness and
Kurtosis
have brief explanations and pictures (link verified 2008-08-31)
Skewness and Kurtosis on the TI-83/84 (rev. Jun 7) shows how to compute two measures of the shape of a data set, includes downloadable program Scatter Plot, Correlation, and Regression on the TI-83/84 (rev. Sep 20)
Getting ŷ from Any x in a Regression on the TI-83/84/89 (rev. Aug 7, 2007) either Decision Points for Correlation Coefficient (rev. Sep 23, 2007)
or Inferences about Linear Correlation on the TI-83/84/89 (rev. May 31)
depending on your instructor Causation (link verified 2008-08-31),
how do we know that smoking causes cancer? R-squared mean? (link verified 2008-08-31) Least Squares, Down and Dirty (rev. Aug 9, 2007) —
Where do those formulas come from? Under Chapter 12 are several more inferences you can make about correlation and regression.
extended examples of probability:
Probability of Shared Birthdays (rev. May 25, 2003),
We the Jury ... (rev. Aug 24, 2003),
and
Medical False Positives and False Negatives (rev. Jan 12, 2004) For more about the first-digit phenomenon, see
Benford’s Law at Mathworld (link verified 2008-08-31). One way it’s used to detect cheating is at Following Benford’s Law, or Looking Out for No. 1 (link verified 2008-08-31). Binomial Probability Distribution on the TI-83/84 (rev. Jun 18), includes downloadable program
Swain v Alabama (link verified 2008-08-31) —
racial bias in jury selection Probability Histograms on the TI-83/84 (rev. Jun 19) Histogram of a Binomial PD on the TI-83/84 (rev. Jun 19)
Normal Calculations on the TI-83/84 or TI-89
for individuals and samples (Mar 25) Normality Check on the TI-83/84 or TI-89 (rev. Jun 23) — how to tell whether a distribution is normal, includes downloadable program
Normal Distribution by Steve Simon — an overview Normal Calculations on the TI-83/84 or TI-89
for individuals and samples (Mar 25) Central Limit Theorem Lab II (Roulette) (rev. Oct 23, 2007) The Behavior of the Sample Mean (link verified 2008-08-31) —
pictures show how sample means are distributed and why that distribution is different from the shape of the population
Difference of Two Proportions in Statistics (link verified 2008-08-31) 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 Inferences about One-Pop. Standard Deviation on the TI-83/84.
Rule of Three
as explained by Steve Simon (link verified 2008-08-31)
gives a technique to calculate a confidence interval when np = 0.
What Does the p-Value Mean? (rev. Oct 31, 2007) One-Tailed or Two-Tailed Hypothesis Test? (rev. Apr 9) Proper Conclusions to Your Hypothesis Tests (rev. Oct 31, 2007) Top 10 Mistakes of Hypothesis Tests (rev. Jul 4) Lab: Inferences for One Population (Apr 13)
Is Statistics Hard? by Gerald Dallal (link verified 2008-08-31)
and
Logic of Hypothesis Testing, part of HyperStat (link verified 2008-08-31) We don’t do it in this class, but if
you want to know how to do hypothesis tests about σ,
the population standard deviation, see Inferences about One Population Standard Deviation
or Inferences about One-Pop. Standard Deviation on the TI-83/84. Critical t on the TI-83/84/89 (rev. Jan 27) Case Study: Gardasil Vaccine (rev. Oct 28, 2007) additional examples of Confidence Intervals for Two Populations (rev. Jul 17) List Operations for Paired t Test on the TI-83/84 (rev. Oct 28, 2007) Number Needed to Treat —
statistical significance and practical significance, with examples
from medical studies (link verified 2008-08-31) Testing Goodness of Fit on the TI-83/84 (rev. Jun 1), includes downloadable program
Chi-Square in Randomized Experiments: the Physicians' Health Study (link verified 2008-08-31)
Inferences about Linear Correlation (rev. Apr 4), with Excel workbook
Inferences about Linear Correlation on the TI-83/84/89 (rev. May 31), with downloadable TI-83/84 program Inferences about Linear Regression (rev. Apr 4), with Excel workbook
Inferences about Linear Regression on the TI-83/84 (rev. Apr 4), with downloadable TI-83/84 program Inferences about One Population Standard Deviation (rev. Aug 10), with Excel workbook
Inferences about One-Pop. Standard Deviation on the TI-83/84 (rev. Aug 10), with downloadable TI-83/84 program Computing Critical χ² on the TI-83/84/89 (rev. Jun 22), includes downloadable TI-83/84 program Review Guide for MATH200, Statistics (rev. Jul 28) Practice Problems for Statistics and
Solutions to Practice Problems for Statistics (rev. Jun 7) Triage: Which Inferential Stats Case Should I Use? (rev. Apr 26) Inferential Statistics Cases (rev. Sep 9)
— On quizzes and the exam, you may use this sheet in addition to your crib sheet.
How Big a Sample Do I Need? (rev. Jul 27)
— You’re not responsible for calculating Case 1 sample size,
which wasn’t covered in class.
TI-83/84 Troubleshooting (rev. Oct 4) Significant Digits and Rounding (rev. Jan 31, 2007) E notation
(link verified 2008-08-31) by Steve Simon Corrections to Sullivan’s Fundamentals of Statistics (rev. Jul 2) Symbol Sheet (rev. Oct 20, 2007) Recommended Books (rev. Aug 27, 2007)
Recommended Videos (Feb 23, 2004)
with links to all the Against All Odds Viewer’s Guides UCLA Statistics Case Studies — real-life applications you can work yourself (link verified 2008-08-31) You can’t trust Excel to do critical statistics. See these
papers by
David
Heiser (link verified 2008-08-31) and
P.J. Wells (link verified 2008-08-31) On-line statistics courses: Course Outline (Aug 22) — policies for this course
pencil-and-paper version (Aug 3)
Course Debriefing (May 26) Email Waiver (Aug 3)Solutions to most quizzes and exams are posted here within 24 hours; here’s a list of the ones given in class so far. (Practice quizzes, with solutions, are listed under each Week above.)
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