Viterbo University - MATH 130: Introductory Statistics
Summer 2005, La Crosse Campus:
Tue 8:00-12:00, May 17, 31; June 7, 14, 21, 28; July 12, 19, 26; Aug 2, 9, 16, 23
Instructor: Rich Maresh, Assoc. Prof. of Mathematics & Department Chair
Office: MC 522, (608) 796-3655 (Home: 608-526-4988)
Email: rjmaresh@viterbo.edu
rjmaresh@charter.net
CATALOG DESCRIPTION: An introductory course which deals with the organization and processing of various types of data, normal and binomial distributions, estimation theory, hypothesis testing, correlation and regression, and analysis of variance. Pre-requisite: acceptable placement exam (indicating readiness for College Algebra) or grade of C or higher in MATH 001 (Introductory Algebra) or its equivalent (i.e. one year of H.S. algebra).
TEXT: Elementary Statistics, Mario Triola, 9th Edition, Addison-Wesley, 2004.
General Education Core Abilities:
1. Thinking: Students engage in the process of inquiry and problem solving that involves both critical and creative thinking.
(a) Students will reason deductively by learning general principles, which are then applied to specific problems.
(b) Students will reason inductively by studying examples, seeing the common characteristics, and broadening the solution to the generic case.
(c) Students will learn to use the statistical process as one of the means of answering a question or supporting a position.
2. Life Value Skills: Students analyze, evaluate and respond to ethical issues from an informed personal value system.
(a) Students will learn of some classic examples of the misuse of statistics and its consequences.
(b) Students will acquire an appreciation for the importance of honesty in the presentation of all, not just favorable, outcomes of statistical research.
3. Communication Skills: Students communicate orally and in writing in an appropriate manner both personally and professionally.
(a) Students will read text and reference materials outside of class.
(b) Students will observe examples and discuss questions and solutions ion class.
(c) Students will communicate solutions to statistical problems in writing on assignments, quizzes, exams, and course projects in appropriate statistical format.
SPECIFIC COURSE GOALS:
1. The student shall understand the basic concepts of collecting and organizing sample data.
2. The student shall understand the use of sample data in making estimates and drawing conclusions about a population.
3. The student shall gain an understanding of the role of statistics in many areas of professional life.
4. The student shall develop an increased level of comfort with quantitative reasoning.
5. The student shall gain an appreciation of the ethical dimension of statistical analysis.
COURSE NOTES & PROCEDURES:
ATTENDANCE: I will not be formally using attendance as an element in deciding your grade. That said, however, I will suggest that because we meet for such a lengthy period of time each week you will be missing the equivalent of MORE THAN A WEEK’S worth of material (based on the “typical” semester 15-week course organization) when you miss a single meeting - basically, each week is the equivalent of FOUR 50-minute class sessions, and this is a THREE-credit course! I do realize that things do come up, especially since many of you are juggling jobs and families, so I hope that the detailed schedule on the syllabus will allow you to work on your own when necessary.
CALCULATORS: I will begin the course by attempting to convince you to acquire a TI-83 Plus or TI-84 Plus calculator. (If you can find a TI-83, that’s fine too, although these days you’ll only find the “Plus” model in the stores.) These cost in the $100-130 range, so I do not take this lightly. I want to make it clear that I do not REQUIRE you to have a TI-83/84, but it will make your life so much easier that I want to strongly encourage you to get hold of one. I will be using an overhead version and will typically show you how to do each type of problem “by hand” (by formula, basically) and “by calculator”. I can assure you that we will be using enough specific statistics features that you will feel it was money well-spent! But I will leave it up to you. Sometimes during the regular semester we have students use Minitab on the campus computers, but during this course many of you will not be at school most of the week, and the calculator allows you to have the same computing power with you wherever you are.
HOMEWORK: One of the advantages to our one-day-per-week schedule is that it leaves you flexible with your time the rest of the week – for jobs, family, etc. One of the disadvantages is that we have to cover so much material at each meeting. There will be weeks when your head will be spinning at the end of the day! Sometimes students get used to the idea in high school that most of the learning should go on during the class meetings, but eventually they come to realize that the real learning, especially at the college level, takes place when they do the homework. If you wish to succeed in this course it is imperative that you find the time to do enough homework each week so that you stay on top of things – that you understand the material all the way along. Because we cover so much material each week and because in this course the new concepts always build on the previous material, if you allow yourself to get even a little bit behind you will be digging a hole for yourself. I am including a schedule that suggests assignments from each section in the book, but if you want to take this course in a mature manner, you will do enough problems in each section to make sure you understand the material. I have included my email and my phone numbers – please make sure you contact me if you are having trouble with some concept.
EXAMS: There will be an exam during class meetings #5, 9, and 13. The final exam will be cumulative - it is almost difficult NOT to make any exam cumulative in MATH 130, since the material builds on content already covered. I do not expect you to memorize formulas - you will be permitted to use the “card” in the text and any tables at the back of the book you find necessary. You may also write up a page of notes for each exam if you would like to, and you may use these pages of notes for the final exam.
PROJECT: Toward the end of the course you will do a “project”. This is a popular type of assignment in statistics education today, since it gives you an opportunity to actually DO some statistics. More details to come…
GRADING: I will use a rather standard scale: 90% for an “A”, 80% for a “B”, 70% for a “C”, and 60% for a “D”. There will be three exams, the first two worth 100 points each and the final exams worth 125 points. In addition there will be a number of problem sets, totaling probably another 100-200 points. The project will be worth 40 points. I expect the total number of possible points to be about 550-600.
Schedule
[1] Introduction to the course: Syllabus, Calculator conversation, etc.
5/17 1-2 Overview, Types of Data p 9 # 1-20
1-3 Critical Thinking p 17 # 1-22
1-4 Experiment Design p 27 # 1-26
2-2 Frequency Distribution p 44 # 1-18
5/24 No Class – Title III Workshop
[2] 2-3 Visualizing Data p 55 # 1-12, 17-22, 25, 26
5/31 2-4 Measures of Center p 69 # 1-4, 9-12, 17, 18
2-5 Measures of Variation p 87 # 1-4, 9-14, 17, 18, 21-24
2-6 Measures of Relative Standing p 99 # 1-10, 13-24
[3] 2-7 Exploratory Data Analysis p 108 # 1-4, 9-12
6/7 3-2 Probability Fundamentals p 128 # 1-18, 25, 26
4-3 Binomial Probability p 203 # 1-24, 33, 34
4-4 Binomial Distribution p 210 # 1-16
[4] Review: Chapters 1-4
6/14 5-2 Standard Normal Distribution p 237 # 1-28, 37-40
5-3 Applications of the Normal Distribution p 246 # 1-12, 17-20
5-4 Sampling Distribution p 256 # 1—8
[5] EXAM #1 (Chapters 1-4)
6/21 5-5 Central Limit Theorem p 267 # 1-16
5-7 Determining Normality p 286 # 1-8
[6] 6-2 Estimating a Population Proportion p 312 # 1-24, 27-30, 37, 39
6/28 6-3 Estimating a Population Mean (s known) p 327 # 1-28
6-4 Estimating a Population Mean (s unknown) p 343 # 1-20
7/5 No Class – Break Week (4th of July)
[7] 6-5 Estimating a Population Variance p 355 # 1-16
7/12 7-2 Basics of Hypothesis Testing p 385 # 2-40
7-3 Testing a Claim about a Proportion p 395 # 1-8, 13, 14
7-4 Testing a Claim about a Mean (s known) p 404 # 2-16
[8] 7-5 Testing a Claim about a Mean (s unknown) p 414 #1-12, 16, 19, 23, 25
7/19 7-6 Testing a Claim about a Standard Dev. or Variance p 423 # 1-11 odd
Review: Chapters 5-7
8-2 Inferences about Two Proportions p 446 # 1-10, 13-15, 18
[9] EXAM #2 (Chapters 5-8)
7/26 8-3 Inferences about Two Means: Independent Samples p 461 # 1-10, 15, 16
8-4 Inferences from Matched Pairs p 471 # 1-9, 13, 15
[10] 8-5 Comparing Variation from Two Samples p 482 # 1-4, 7, 13
8/2 9-2 Correlation p 510 # 1-7, 11, 13
9-3 Regression p 527 # 1-12
9-4 Variation and Prediction Intervals p 538 # 1-10, 17-19
[11] 10-2 Multinomial Experiments: Goodness of Fit p 577 # 1-6, 8, 10, 12, 16
8/9 10-3 Contingency Tables: Independence and Homogeneity p 591 # 1-4, 9, 11, 19
11-2 ANOVA: Analysis of Variance p 616 # 1-6, 11
[12] Project Presentations
8/16 Review for Final
Practice Exam
[13] FINAL EXAM (Comprehensive)
8/23