Psychology 100A Psychological Statistics Winter 2012 Lectures Class TR 11 00 12 15 Humanities A51 Discussion optional F 12 00 12 50 Dodd 147 Instructor Sean McAuliffe Office hours Tue 12 15 1 15 Thu 9 30 10 30 1346 Franz Hall middle psychology building behind the vending machines EMAIL vpstatman hotmail com Teaching Assistants Jeff Bye email jkbye ucla edu Office hours Thu 12 30 1 30 Wed 2 00 3 00 in Franz 7562 Brian Odegaard email odegaard brian gmail com Office hours Tue 10 00 11 00 Wed 3 00 4 00 in Franz 2567B Ebook and Homework Website www statstext com is the required online text we will be using 35 for a 3 month subscription Students must subscribe for homework submission There is a printed out version of the online text which is available at Westwood Copies in Westwood 1001 Gayley at corner of Gayley and Weyburn it s about 30 dollars This is optional for those who want a printed copy of the website Ignore the chapter on advanced power Friday discussion sections There will be no new material introduced in the Friday discussion sections so you are not required to attend but many students find them helpful Overview In this course we will cover the basic data analysis concepts and procedures used by research psychologists The course will briefly review ways of describing data descriptive statistics and methods of evaluating hypotheses and testing psychological theories inferential statistics Examples will be drawn almost exclusively from the psychological literature Specific topics include correlation t tests and ANOVA Course Requirements and Grading It is very important that you attend all classes in order to keep up with the material Your grade will depend on your performance on the midterms and final exams If you miss some lectures and get lost you will be in serious trouble because concepts build on other concepts Statistics is cumulative but the exams emphasize recent materials All exam material will come from lectures Grading basis Exam When Exam 1 Thursday Jan 26 in class Thursday Feb 16 in class Thursday Mar 8 in class Tue Mar 20 3 00 6 00 See Schedule Exam 2 Exam 3 Final Homework Class Participation clickers Randomly During Lecture Total Points 24 Not Cumulative Multiple Choice 24 Not Cumulative Multiple Choice 24 Not Cumulative Multiple Choice 58 Cumulative Multiple Choice 24 6 Homework assignments Each worth 4 points 7 you can miss one of these without any penalty 6 Format Grading As you will learn in the course the distribution of scores can be described in a standardized way A Z score is a standardized score which indicates how far a particular score is away from the mean or average score in terms of standard deviations a measure of how wide a distribution is Exam scores that are above the mean will have a positive Z score exam scores below the mean will have a negative Z score Your total points in the course will be transformed to a z score and that will be used as the basis for your grade Here is the breakdown for the course Overall Z score Grade Approximate of class receiving score 1 30 A 10 0 85 A10 0 55 B 10 0 25 B 10 0 00 B10 0 25 C 10 0 85 C 20 1 30 C10 1 70 D 5 1 70 F 5 If the grade for your absolute score is higher than the grade determined by the curve you will receive the grade corresponding to the absolute score For example if you received 90 5 but that was a z score of 82 then you would receive an A 90 5 instead of a B Z 0 82 This prevents any student from being hurt by the curve The curve can only help you Your grade is up to you While the course is going on I will do as much as I can to make sure you learn as much as you can about this material If you want to learn more or you are confused COME TO OFFICE HOURS I may be ugly but I am not that scary in my office At the end of every quarter after the final there are inevitably a handful of students who beg me for a way to increase their grade because they didn t seek help when they had the chance My answer to these requests to change grades is always the same No No No No No It would be grossly unfair to all students if I ever allowed anything but the scores determine the grade Fairness is very important and fairness is the reason why a student will NEVER be able to increase their grade after the course is done Missing Exam Under certain EXTREME conditions severe medical illness with complete medical documentation or death of an IMMEDIATE family member ONE missing midterm exam can be substituted with the lowest Z score of the remaining exams In this way students who are consistent good performers need not be hurt by a missing exam You must inform of your excuse BEFORE any exam you will miss The only exception to this is if you can prove you were completely unable to let me know e g unconscious No matter how sick you are you can always send me an email For example Exam 1 Z 1 0 Exam 2 Missing due to EXTREME case of Ebola Exam 3 Z 1 6 Final Exam Z 1 2 In this case the missing exam would be scored as z 1 0 because 1 0 was the lowest z score of the remaining exams The z score of the missing exam will be converted to a raw score and that score will be used as your grade for the missing exam Missing the FINAL exam will result in an F Only ONE of the 3 midterm exams can be missed No incompletes extra credit etc are given in 100A Exam Difficulty The exams are DIFFICULT The scores are curved so this is really not a problem In fact hard exams are good because they allow the students who know more to distinguish themselves from those who don t know very much An exam that is too easy does not allow for a wide enough spread in the distribution Some of the exam questions will be similar to questions in the book or examples done in class Some of the questions will require you to understand the concepts well enough to relate them to each other in a potentially novel way Exam Format Each exam is multiple choice Homework Homework assignments will be available online at www statstext com Click on the pink tab labeled Homework Assignments to print the homework You will complete the homework by hand on a printed homework sheet After you have completed the homework on paper you will need to submit your answers online for grading credit at www statstext com Click on the pink tab labeled Homework Assignments to submit your homework solution Homework must be submitted by 10 45 am on the date the homework is due No …