QSCI 381 Instructor: Gordon Swartzman TA: Maureen Kennedy

Winter 2002 Henderson Hall 459 543-0061 MGH 306, 616-2187

gordie@apl.washington.edu mkenn@u.washington.edu

INTRODUCTION TO PROBABILITY AND STATISTICS

Lecture Time: MTWThF 9:30-10:20 LOCATION: MTWThF Paddington 108

Text: Elementary Statistics (Required) by Larson and Farber

Student Solution Manual (Optional) by Schaffer

EXCEL Manual (Optional) by Dretzke

Holidays: M January 21 Final Exam: W, March 20, 8:30-10:20,

M February 18 Paddington 108

Last Day Instruction: Office Hrs: Contact at any time by e-mail

Friday March 15 visit during office hours, or by appointment

Grading: Four hourly exams

1. January 18 3. February 15

2. February 1 4. March 8

Exam grading is based on the final exam and your three best scores of the four

hourly exams. All exams are closed book, but you may bring the formula card that

comes with the textbook, plus a prompt sheet (1 page maximum) if you wish.

Calculators must be brought to all exams. The final exam must be taken at the

time and date listed above. No exceptions! Hourly exams may be rescheduled, but only for exceptional reasons and only if approved in advance. Re-scheduled

exams must be taken before the next scheduled exam.

The three highest hourly exams constitute 45% of your grade; the final exam 35%; class participation and attendance is 5%; homework assignments are 15%; extra credit problems and projects constitute up to 10% additional. Note: it is OK for students to work together on homeworks, though individual assignments must be handed in. The following chart can be used to estimate your final GPA. If your total weighted points are as shown below then your

estimated GPA will be:

Total Points GPA Total Points GPA

100+ 4.0 70 2.3

95 3.9 65 1.9

90 3.7 60 1.5

85 3.4 55 1.0

80 3.1 50 0.0

75 2.7

Note: this is NOT grading on a curve. Everyone in the class can get a 4.0.

There will be 10 weekly homework assignments. These are always due by Friday by

4 P.M. Homework is not accepted after 4 P.M. on the due date except illness or

if approved in advance. Homework may be submitted either by e-mail to Maureen (mkenn@u.washington.edu), at class on Friday, or to Mary Gates Hall Suite 306. Homework assignments consist of 6-17 problems, taken from the text. All of the assigned problems will be graded. To test your understanding of the material covered, and in preparation for the exams, you would do well to work as many additional problems as needed. The optional Student's Solution Manual contains complete solutions to the odd numbered exercises and all of the Try It Yourself problems. Answers to these problems are included in the back of the text (notice the distinction between answers and solutions). There are review exercises and a chapter quiz for the material covered in the chapter at the end of each chapter. Answers to the odd review exercises and all the quiz questions are at the end of the text.

Cumulative tests appear at the end of Chapters 3,6, 9 and 11. Answers to these

questions are given in the back of the text. Hourly exams will closely parallel

the chapter quizzes and cumulative tests. I plan to conduct quiz reviews at

my office hour on each Thursday before an exam at a convenient location. These reviews will last an hour. There is an online version of the text at the website: http://cw.prenhall.com/cgi-bin/binder/syl.cgi?site=larson

This site is available for your use and I also have used it for the assignments and calendar for the course, so you pretty much have to use it. You can find the syllabus by searching on instructor last name (the easiest way). Then click on QS381 and you will be prompted for a password, which is qs381. See me or

Maureen Kennedy, or e-mail us if you are having trouble getting into the syllabus or onto the website. Its use is MANDATORY (and it could be fun). There are copies of the study quizzes online, with interactive grading, so you might want to check out that feature.

E-MAIL: Each student must be able to receive e-mail. Preferably this should

be done on DANTE, but any machine is OK. I will use e-mail to let you all

know about any unforeseen changes in schedule, hints about problem solutions

if I find out about difficulties, answer your questions, and serve up

statistical tidbits ad hoc. Homework assignments are on the website. I do check my e-mail often, so it is a good way to get in touch with me.

CALCULUS: Calculus is not required for this course and not knowing it should

be no disadvantage. In my mind the most important thing you learn in this

course is how to think about probability and statistics; how to exercise your

logical skills in interpreting sampling problems in a statistical framework.

COMPUTER SOFTWARE: Despite the great dependency of statistics on computing, you

can manage to learn the basics without the use of any statistical software.

You will however require a calculator and, if you do learn the software, some

of the problems will take significantly less time to do (thus you can do more

problems in the same amount of time). The book relates problems to 'technology

tools' which are 3: A TI83 calculator, the statistics software MINITAB and

the spreadsheet software EXCEL, which also has statistical features. EXCEL and

MINITAB are available on most computers located in Mary Gates Hall and the

OUGL. Undergraduate students can access MINITAB on GOODALL and will need

to set up an account on it if they want to use MINITAB. Graduate students use

MEAD. To run MINITAB, just type minitab at the command prompt after logging in.

EXCEL is the most widely available. There is a special EXCEL manual companion

to the book, which has a CD included with special statistical features. If

you want to do further statistics on EXCEL this manual appears to be cost effective.

Teaching Assistant: Ms. Maureen Kennedy is TA this quarter. Her e-mail is mkenn@u.washington.edu. Our office hours will be distributed during the first week of class.