Various Useful Commentson Lectures, Homework and ExamsStatistics 371, Fall Semester, 2009,Professor WardropThe perfect is the enemy of the good–Voltaire.This course is, for me, a work-in-progress. This will make your life as a student in this class morefrustrating than I would like. I am sorry about that, but see no realistic way to avoid it. Taking this coursewill be a bit like driving across the U.S. at night. The headlights will not illuminate the whole country atonce, but, with luck, they illuminate enough to allow the driver to avoid accidents.I do not have all of the course materials prepared. I will prepare them as the semester progresses. Mygoal is to always have at least two weeks’ material ready if you want to work ahead.Below I will describe the key components of the course materials.1. I will post Course Notes on my website. The Course Notes (CN) will provide a development of thematerial covered in Stat 371. In many cases the CN will present much more sophisticated math thanyou will need to be successful in the course.I expect you to read the CN before lecture. (I will announce and post the sections to be read beforeeach lecture.)2. At lecture I will assume that you have read and attempted to understand the assigned material in theCN. This is a new feature to my course this semester. I don’t know how well this will work. If theclass is honestly having trouble understanding some complicated ideas in the CN, then I will spendlecture time on it. If, however, the class is simply ‘blowing off’ the reading assignment, I will notbe helpful. Distinguishing between these situations will be a challenge for me, but not, I predict,insurmountable. After all, I have been teaching intro stats for 35 years and have some idea on thedifficulty of the material.In lecture I will focus mostly on showing you how to use the material presented in the CN. I will dothis by spending most of the lecture time working out detailed examples of how to use the material.These examples will be posted on my website with a title like ‘Lecture Examples.’ You should bringthe Lecture Examples to lecture so that you can follow what I am doing; i.e. I won’t be writing theLecture Examples on the board.I suspect that this sounds quite vague. I don’t believe that further explanation at this time would help.When I start doing this in lecture, I hope the method will be clear. If not, we can talk about it.3. There will be 12 weekly HomeworkAssignments that will be due on Thursdays. (Some Thursdays—obviously Thanksgiving, but others too—will not have homework due.) Ideally, my Lecture Exampleswill be similar to homework; thus, attending lecture should make the homework easier. Also, you areenrolled in a weekly discussion. In discussion, the TA will show you how to do the HomeworkAssignment. From my point-of-view, the ideal is that you try to do the homework and then get helpat discussion. If you don’t need help then you can skip discussion that week.After each homework is submitted I will email solutions to the homework to the class. I will not beemailing or posting solutions to the Lecture Examples. If you want to see the solutions to the LectureExamples you must come to lecture or borrow notes from a friend.14. Exams. We will have two midterms and a final. The dates of the exams are:• Tuesday, October 13, during lecture.• Thursday, November 19, during lecture.• Thursday, December 17, 10:05–12:05 for lecture 1;Saturday, December 19, 2:45–4:45 for lecture 2.The rooms for the exams will be announced and posted when they are known.The final will be cumulative, but mostly will focus on new material (after the material covered on thesecond midterm).The exam questions will be very similar to the Lecture Examples and homework exercises.Here are the rules for taking the exams:• The exams will be closed book. You will be allowed the following materials only on the desk infront of you during the exams:Your writing instruments; your exam paper; the one page of formulas providedby me (see below); and your calculator.You may not use a cell phone or similar device as a calculator. If you violate these rules or ifthe proctor sees you using a cell phone or similar device, you will be charged with academicmisconduct.• I will provide one page of formulas, definitions, etc. for your use during each exam. If timeallows, I will email this page to the class a few days before the exam and you will be able tomake requests for additional information. I will accommodate requests that I deem reasonable.You should not bring the emailed page to the exam; I will hand out the final ‘formula page’ withthe exam.A note on cheating on the exams. Don’t do it. If I catch anyone cheating, I might choose to pursue itto the full extent through the university’s system for handling cheating, which could result in an expulsionfrom school.At the cost of extra work to me, I use a system that makes successful cheating much more difficult forthe student. I offer its details now because my goals are to dissuade cheating and reassure honest students.Entrapping people is not my goal.My system is described below.Each exam consists of a number of problems. I create three versions of each problem. The versions are,by my design and in my opinion, of equal difficulty and cover exactly the same material/concepts. Theysimply have somewhat different numbers in them. I mix the different versions of each question in manyways to create 15 or more distinct exams. The people sitting around you possibly have no problems incommon with you or, at most, a small number of problems in common. Thus, if you copy answers froma neighbor, chances are you will be writing down numbers that are not on your exam. When I find suchanswers, I give them no partial credit.Here is a simple example of what I mean. Exercise 1 asks you to calculate the area of a rectangle (basetimes height). Version 1 has a base of 5 and a height of 12. Version 2 has a base of 7 and a height of 18. Ifa person with Version 2 writes on his/her paper: 5(12) = 60, then the person will receive 0 points for thiswrong answer. If I find several such ‘borrowed’ answers on an exam I might choose to pursue charges ofacademic misconduct against the
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