Formal Office Hours:  Thursday,  Dec. 14, 9:00 - 12:30,  1:30-5:00
                                Friday,      Dec. 15, 10:30 - 12:30,  1:30-5:00
                                (Note: I will be out of town, with no email, Monday - Wednesday)
 

Course Handouts and Graphics:
 
3.  Data Set for HW B3:  EXCEL Spreadsheet.

2.  Data Set for HW B2:  ASCII file.

1.  Initial Handouts (mostly about getting to the Internet & Student Questionnaire): Microsoft Word Version      PDF Version
 

Spring Semester, 2005
 

Class Meetings:      T-Th 2:00-3:15,   Murphey 111
 

Class Waiting List:    Contact Ms. Mary Hinrichs
                                     Office:  Smith ???
                                     Phone:  962-2307
                                     Email:   mhinrich@email.unc.edu

          Caution:  you must have a form on file with her, to be considered "on the waiting list".
 

Instructor: J.S. Marron, Professor
Email:  marron@email.unc.edu    (checked regularly, preferred for most questions about HW)
Office: New West 304
Phone:
      Office:  962-2188
      Home:  493-2844
      FAX:    962-1279

Office Hours:
       "Always":  Monday 1:30-3:00, Tuesday 3:30 - 5:00
       Usually:  Monday  10:00 - 12:00
                     Tuesday 10:00 - 12:00
                     Wednesday  1:30 - 3:30
        Possibly:   other times
 

Grading:    Based on:
    1.  Homework     10%
    2.   Midterm I      20%
    3.   Midterm II      20%
    4.  Final Exam (cumulative)  50%

Homework:  Assigned daily, collection for each week is due Thursday of the following week, at the beginning of class.  No late homework accepted, lowest two scores dropped.    Notes:   Readability is your responsibility. Highlight your numerical answer.  Never turn in more than one page per problem (or you will earn no credit for that problem).  In EXCEL, highlighting a block, and doing "Alt, File, Print, Print What: Selection", makes this straighforward.

Dates of examinations:
    Midterm I: Tuesday, September 26.
    Midterm II: Tuesday, November 14.
    Final:  Saturday, Dec. 16,  4:00PM.
 

Textbooks:

      Moore, D. S. and McCabe, G. P. (2003) Introduction to the Practice of Statistics, 4th edition, W. H. Freeman.
                This is the main textbook.  Well written (much better than most of it's type).
                Suggested approach to course:  listen to what happens in class, do HW
                     promptly, and if you feel yourself falling behind, then catch up using text book.

      Hoppe, F. M. (2003) Excel Manual for Moore and McCabe's Introduction to the Practice of Statistics, W. H. Freeman.
                This gives useful introductory material for the use of Microsoft Excel.
 

Syllabus:     (parts of Moore and McCabe likely will be covered)

Chapter:         Sections:
    1                  1, 2, 3
    2         1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7

End of material for Midterm I

    3        1, 2, 3, 4
    4        1, 2, 3, 4, 5
    5                  1, 2
    6                  1, 2, 3, 4
    7                  1
    8                  1
    9                  1, 2
   10                 1
 

Internet and Email access:

+  Access to this web page is essential for this course.  Many important things, such as HW assignments will be posted here.

+  Class ListServ.  This is an essential device for staying on top of course announcements (e.g. cancelled classes, discovered errors on HW problems, changes made to the web page, etc.).  It is also a forum for many useful tips on HW problems (selected answers to student's questions will be broadcast this way).
    Pre-enrolled class members have been already subscribed to the list, and don't need to take further action (unless you want to unsubscribe).
    If you are not subscribed, but want to join, go to the URL: http://listserv.unc.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?join=stat31-3.
    If you want to make some changes in your subscription (e.g. to unsubscribe), go to the URL: http://listserv.unc.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=Stat31-3.
 

Computation:

+  "A tool, not an end in itself".  Intended to "facilitate thought, not replace it".

+  Never done in class, even for exams (so don't bring your CCI laptop computer).

+  Done with Microsoft EXCEL, available on your CCI Computer

+  The Statistics Department has developed a good quality EXCEL "Primer" (web based introduction), that can be found at the URL: http://www.stat.unc.edu/teach/rosu/Stat31/Companion.html.  If you have never used EXCEL it is strongly recommended that you work through this (even if you have some experience it may be worth a look to be sure you are up to speed on what we are doing with it).

+  If there are additonal specifics about which you are wondering "how do I do that?", the first chapter of the Hoppe (2000) text above provides well organized access to a number of important topics.

+  If you have no prior computing experience, then a careful reading of that same Chapter I, at the beginning of the Hoppe (2000) text may be useful..

+  General rules for when you encounter a problem:

        1.    "Just try something"
        2.    Ask a friend, or somebody hanging around.
        3.    Seek "more official" help.

+  Caution:  Numerical answers to HW problems will be given.  Avoid the trap of "just twiddling EXCEL until you get the right number" (because you can't do that on the exam).
 

Access to data for homework problems:

A lot of "busy work retyping", can be avoided by "importing data".  For the text book problems, almost all data sets are available on the CDrom that came with the text.  To use these in EXCEL, the following is recommended:

1.  Start Microsoft EXCEL.  For example, you can do this from Windows via:    Start  -->  Programs  -->   Microsoft Excel.

2.  Within Microsoft EXCEL, get to the "Open file" menu, e.g. by   File   -->  Open.

3.  Manipulate the buttons to move around the directory structure, until you can find the needed file.  A good first step is to change the "Files of Type" field to "All Files (*.*)".  Then manipluate the buttons so that you follow a path something like:  d:   -->  Extras   -->   Data Sets   -->    (appropriate chapter)

4.  Highlight the file that you want, and click "Open".  This starts the "Text Import Wizard".

5.  How the Text Import Wizard works varies from file to file, so you need to do some trial and error.  The first thing to try is to just hit the "Next" button at each step.  If that works, you are in business.

6.  Continually hitting "Next" fails if the data don't appear in the right place, or if you get something strange like two columns of data all apearing in single cells.  If that happens, repeat the process, but htis time try different possibilities for "Delimited" versus "Fixed Width", and for "Tab delimiters" vs. "Space delimiters".
 

Some things to avoid:  (i.e. some common mistakes).

A.  You don't need to "load the software", that is actually the main component of the disk.  You may do this if you choose, but it is not required to get at the data, which is all we will need.  If you have accidentally done this, you may want to "uninstall" it, using something like:  Start   -->  Settings   -->   Control Panel   -->   Add/Remove Programs.

B.  Do not try to access the file using only "My computer" or "Windows Explorer".  If you do this,your computer will not know that you want to use Excel on it, so it won't get piped into a spreadsheet.
 

If you don't have the CD rom:   Some students bought a used book, or for some other don't have the CD rom.  For such people, I have put a copy of the data sets here.
 

Additional Sources of Help:

1.  Open Tuturial sessions:

2.  Instructional Assistants:            E-mail:          Office:          Telephone:
  Mr. John Fricks                          fricks@email.unc.edu         Smith108             962-3992
  Ms. Rima Izem                           rizem@email.unc.edu         Smith 101            962-1488

Additional Tips on using Microsoft EXCEL97:

+  On many machines, including those in the ATN Labs, many of the statistical analysis tools we will use require loading the "Analysis ToolPak".

+  You can see if this available, by starting EXCEL, then clicking on "Tools" on the toolbar at the top.  If the Analysis ToolPak is loaded, your screen should look like:

If the last option, called "Data Analysis..." is there, then the Analysis ToolPak is loaded, and you can follow instructions as in the Dummeldinger textbook.

+  If the Analysis ToolPak is not loaded, you should be able to load it by going to the "Add-Ins..." Option on the above menu.  This will pull up a window that looks something like:

Click in the box for "Analysis ToolPak", so the screen looks like the above, and choose "OK".  Then "Data Analysis..." will show on the "Tools" menu as shown above.

+  If you always use the same machine, then you should only need to load the Analysis ToolPak once.  However, when you go to a different machine at the ATN Labs, it is likely that you will need to load it on that machine (at least at the beginning of the semester!).
 

If you have suggestions for improving this page, please send email to marron@stat.unc.edu.
 
 

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