preparation

Tue Jan 26

• Nothing specific for today, but there's a lot for Thursday which you could start.

Thu Jan 28

• Think about why you are here! Come prepared to talk briefly about what you're hoping to get from the course and how it will feed into your wider academic or other interests.
• The textbook is OpenIntro Statistics 3rd edition. Make sure you have a copy and/or can access it. Look over in the left menu and the resources page for links.
• The software analysis and plotting system we'll be using is open source statistical computing package R - again see the left menu and resources page. It's available for download at the R Project Homepage and you might want to use the RStudio interface for it. (Recommended but not required.) RStudio is also available through a web-browser at http://csmarlboro.org:8999 - you should all already have a username and password that I sent you via email.
  • Make sure you can get it up and running, either as an app or online.
  • Work through Lab 0, "Introduction to R and RStudio".
• Read
  • Misleading with Statistics: How Journalists make Arguments with Distorted Data and
  • Infographics and Visualizations as Tools for the Mind.

Tue Feb 2

• Finish working through the "Introduction to R and Rstudio" lab if you haven't already.
• Start reading chapter 1 in the text, through 1.5, and come to class ready to discuss.
• Keep an eye out for data visualizations in the news to discuss in class.

Thu Feb 4

• Continue reading the rest of chapter 1. Again, come to class ready to discuss.
• Start the next R lab, "Introduction to Data".

Tue Feb 9

• Work through "Intro to Data" R lab.
• Finish reading and reviwing chapter 1, especially the mean and standard deviation that we went over, if you haven't already.
• Browse through the links in my Feb 4 notes on graphing in R. Using any data you like (for example the built in iris data) see if you can make box-and-whisker plot, a bar chart, and a scatter plot.
• We'll work through making graphs in R during class.

Thu Feb 11

• Work on your homework due tomorrow.

Tue Feb 16

• Start reading chapter 2, on probability. Skip section 2.2, on conditional probability.

Thu Feb 18

• We'll continue our discussion of the probability material in chapter 2.

Tue Feb 23

• We'll start with a discussion of conditional probability :
  • Read the section on conditional probability, chapter 2 section 2.
  • And here's a medical test example which we will discuss in class : https://www.math.hmc.edu/funfacts/ffiles/30002.6.shtml

Thu Feb 25

• Review "expectation value" from the probability chapter.
• Read and think about Matt's pig dice game, which we'll investigate on Thursday.

Thu March 3

• 1st quiz - review chap 1, 2 material
• Read section 3.1 in the text.

Thu March 10

• Finish reading section 3.1 if you haven't already.
• Review problems 3.3 and 3.5, which we did in class on Tuesday.
• Get an idea of what's in section 3.4, on the binomial distribution - we'll discuss some of that.
• Come ready to discuss your Pig-like game.

Tue March 28

• 2nd homework due

Thu March 30

• Starting thinking about what you want to do for a term project.
• Start reading chapter 4. Go through at least 4.1 and 4.2, and start 4.3. (We'll continue with this material into next week.)

Tue Apr 5

• Read chapter 4.3 in the textbook, on hypothesis testing.
• I've added a "project proposal" assignment to the homework page, due Thursday.

Tue Apr 12

• Start reading chapter 5 in the text, through 5.3, especially on the t-test.

Tue Apr 17

• Come to class with questions about what we've done in chap 4 & 5 - review!