Math 201, Introductory Statistics
Instructor Information
Eric Schulz, 509-527-4281, Office #16A located on the first floor on the Main Building on WWCC's Walla Walla campus - located in lower left area of the 1st Floor building map. My office hours are 1:00 to 2:00 daily. Please contact me via email or phone to arrange an appointment if you are unable to come by during my normal office hours. I normally respond to email promptly during the day but rarely in the evenings and on weekends. If you send an email in the evenings or weekends I will reply as soon as I can on the following work day.Course Description
A study of both descriptive and inferential statistics. Topics for the course include: data presentation, and analysis, measures of central tendency and dispersion, sampling distributions, parameter estimation/confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, and linear regression. Prerequisite: Grade of "C-" or higher in MATH 95 or permission of the Mathematics Department.Required Materials
Textbook and/or StatsPortal. The textbook for the course is The Basic Practice of Statistics, 4th edition, by David S. Moore, W.H. Freeman. The textbook is available in the WWCC Bookstore bundled with an activiation code for the StatsPortal website. The StatsPortal activiation code does not add anything to the price of a new textbook when they are bundled together. If you borrowed a textbook, purchased a used textbook, or purchased a new textbook somewhere other than the WWCC Bookstore that is not bundled with the StatsPortal activiation code, then you will need acquire a StatsPortal activiation code separately. The StatsPortal website is where reading quizzes and homework assignments will be submitted for credit - no paper homework assignments will be turned in for credit. Additionally, the StatsPortal website contains a complete electronic version of the course textbook (eBook), video tutorials (StatTutor), chapter summary podcasts, solution manual, statistical software (CrunchIt!) etc.If you are comfortable reading and studying text on a computer screen and not having a printed textbook to read (there is a substantial amount of reading expected in this course), it is possible purchase a StatsPortal activiation code and not a physical textbook since the entire textbook is available to you once you have logged in to the StatsPortal website. A StatsPortal subscription can be purchased from the WWCC Bookstore or directly from the publisher using the StatsPortal link on the left of this webpage ($52 for 1 year subscription).
To create your StatsPortal account you will need either the activiation code that is bundled with a new course textbook or a separately purchased subscription from the StatsPortal website. Create your StatsPortal account as soon as possible by using the StatsPortal link on the left of this webpage. When you create your StatsPortal login using the activation code you will need to provide enough information to find our course such as state, college, instructor name, and our Statistics (Spring 2008) course name. Assignments will begin to be due within a few days of the start of the course.
Email Address: When you create your StatsPortal account you will need to provide a valid email address. It is in our best interest to use your WWCC Student Email address ( it ends in student.wwcc.edu ). The probability of an email between us being stopped by the college spam filter, an email provider spam filter, or either one of our mail client junk mail filters is decreased substantially when we all stay on WWCC's email system. Information about how to activate and use your WWCC Student Email Account can be found by going to WWCC's homepage (wwcc.edu) and selecting Webmail in the Quick Links drop down list. Please avoid using hotmail.com, gmail.com, yahoo.com, aol.com, mac.com, msn.com, or some other commercial email address for course related communication - I have had many instances where student emails from common commercial domains get trapped by spam and junk mail filters over which you and I have little control. Regardless of your choice of email address, it MUST be entered correctly when you create your StatsPortal account ... you cannot go back and correct an invalid email address (your email address becomes your StatsPortal login name) and you will be faced with entering the incorrect address every time you log in to StatsPortal. Furthermore, we'll have to do additional work to enter a correct email address inside of StatsPortal so you receive important notes.
Calculator: A scientific calculator capable of two variable statistics calculations. If you find it necessary to purchase a scientific calculator, the Texas Instruments TI-30XIIS is economical and well designed.
Textbook Reading
Each assigned chapter of our textbook should be read completely. The chapters of many algebra textbooks are not particularly well suited to be read as they are usually filled with example problems and step-by-step solutions which is excellent for referencing but not for reading. The chapters of our statistics textbook are meant to be read, highlighted, summarized, etc., before starting to work on the assigned homework problems. Practice problems, labeled "Apply Your Knowledge (AYK)", are found throughout the chapter and are useful for practicing material discussed in the reading material preceding the "AYK" problems.The eBook version of the textbook has tools available which can be used to highlight the electronic text and insert notes into the chapter material. Click on the reddish "eBook Tools" link in the right margin when reading eBook chapter material and you'll be able to add notes and highlight the electronic text.
There are many new terms to be learned in statistics that should be memorized - use the definitions in the chapter together with the chapter summaries to learn the new vocabulary terms. Chapter reading is assigned on the ASSIGNMENTS tab of StatsPortal.
A statistics course is VERY different from an algebra, geometry, or even calculus course. It is necessary that you carefully read the textbook, learn new vocabulary words, and summarize your reading before starting to work through homework assignments. If you start to work on a homework assignment without reading beforehand and think you'll just search the text for an example problem similar to an assigned problem - you will be frustrated! My advice to you is to READ THE TEXTBOOK carefully BEFORE tackling the homework assignment if you want to experience success in the course.
Chapter Homework Assignments
Homework assignments for each chapter studied will be assigned. All homework assignments will be listed on the ASSIGNMENTS tab of StatsPortal. Each chapter homework assignment is worth 20 points and is to be completed for credit in StatsPortal. The problems in the online homework assignment are based on the chapter Check Your Skills and Exercise problems but ask slightly different questions than the textbook/eBook problems - this is to facilitate software grading of your answers. If you have worked on and understand the textbook/eBook problems, then answering the homework questions in the online StatsPortal chapter homework assignment should not be too difficult. However, if you do not work through the textbook exercises assigned, then you should plan on spending significantly more time at a computer working on the online homework assignment.The due dates for the online homework assignments are set so that there is plenty of time to read the chapter materia, work through the problems, ask questions, and then complete the online homework assignment before it is required to be completed even taking into account work schedules and other activities. I would expect that many students will complete the online assignments well before the due dates - it should be an exception to be completing the online work "just" before it is due. Assignment due dates are visible in StatsPortal on the ASSIGNMENT and CALENDAR tabs so you can plan accordingly.
Each StatsPortal Chapter Homework assignment can be taken at most twice. If the grade earned on the first submission of a chapter homework assignment is lower than desired, then you can choose to complete the homework assignment a second time. The grade for the chapter homework assignment will be the greater of the two scores. Do not expect to be working with the same numbers in a second working of the homework - questions are randomly selected for each homework assignment. The homework assignments are not available to be taken after the posted due date has passed.
DO NOT PROCRASTINATE!! THERE ARE RARELY EXCEPTIONS TO THE POSTED DUE DATES FOR HOMEWORK! The due dates for online activities have been set to allow students plenty of time to complete the tasks. Do not, I repeat, do not wait to complete an online homework assignment until just before it is due. If you experience technical problems (lost internet connection, frozen computer, etc) the due date will not be modified and/or postponed. Plan ahead to complete the online assignments without pushing the limits of the due date/time.
In addition to the ASSIGNMENTS tab in StatsPortal you can view due dates on the CALENDAR tab as well. The CALENDAR also shows when you should be starting a particular chapter.
StatsPortal Resources
The course website can be reached from a link at http://math.wwcc.edu/eric/ . Additional information will be posted on the web as the quarter develops - check the schedule for the course regularly as the content on the page will change frequently.Tutorial videos, called "StatTutor" resources in StatsPortal, for material throughout the text are available in the Stats Resources in StatsPortal. The eBook contains links to the StatTutor tutorials as well.
Study Guides for each chapter are available in StatsPortal that contain chapter overviews, formulas, and detailed solutions for select exercises.
Chapter summaries are available in StatsPortal as Podcasts.
Statistical web-based software called "CrunchIt!" is accessible in StatsPortal. Datasets found in the textbook are also online in a form useful for CrunchIt! and Excel.
Exams
There will be three one-hour exams and a comprehensive final exam that are paper and pencil exams, i.e., not taken "online" in StatsPortal. These exams are all written by the instructor to test both the skill mastery and conceptual understand of the material - the exams do not contain multiple choice style questions nor fill in the blank questions. Watch the course schedule for exam dates - there will be at minimum a three-day window for each exam. If you are not able to take exams at the WWCC Testing Center, please contact the instructor to arrange for an alternate proctored location. Taking any exam after the normal three-day window is strongly discouraged as completion of the course by the end of the quarter will become very difficult.The hours for the WWCC Testing Center (Walla Walla Campus, Room 287) are as follows:
Monday: 8:00 to 10:00 am, 1:00 to 5:00 pm
Tuesday: 8:00 to 11:00 am, 3:00 to 6:00 pm
Wednesday: 11:00 am to 2:00 pm, 5:00 to 8:00 pm
Thursday: 8:00 to 10:00 am.
Grades
Online homework (~ 17 homework assignments, 20 points each), one-hour paper and pencil exams (3 exams, 100 points each), the comprehensive final exam (150 points), and/or additional assigned activities will be the assessment tools used in the course. Final grades are simply a function of the percentage of possible points earned:(Exam1 + Exam2 + Exam3 + FinalExam + HomeworkTotal)/PointsPossible
Your current grade status can be checked in StatsPortal - all quiz and homework grades will be in StatsPortal and exam scores will be uploaded when available. Let p be the percent of the possible course points earned by a student, the course grade is then given in the following table:
93% <= p<=100% ->A
90% <= p <93% -> A-
87% <= p <90% -> B+
83% <= p < 87% -> B
80% <= p < 83% -> B-
77% <= p < 80% -> C+
70% <= p < 77% -> C
67% <= p < 70% -> D+
60% <= p < 67% -> D
0% <= p < 60% -> F