Instructor: Tom Ryan 312 Thomas Building, 865-3791 tar@psu.edu

Office Hours: Tuesday 10:30-11:30, Thursday 1:30-2:20, and by appointment

Text: Moore & McCabe, Introduction to the Practice of Statistics, Third Edition

Stat 200H is an introductory statistics course. No statistics background is assumed, and only minimal math (high school algebra) is assumed. We will cover most of the un-starred sections in the text. I hope to convince you by the end of the course that statistical methods "make sense" -- that they are simply extensions of your common sense.

Typical weekly schedule: Usually new material will be presented in the Monday, Wednesday and Friday classes, which will be lecture/discussion classes. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we will often have problem sessions, computer use sessions, video tapes, or discussions. Five classes a week is probably more than we need for this course, so some weeks will have only four classes (usually skipping Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday).

Homework: In order to learn statistics it is necessary to do many homework exercises. Problems will be assigned in almost every MWF class. You should normally do the problems by the next MWF class (e.g., do problems assigned Monday by Wednesday). We will spend some time in almost all classes going over homework problems .

Grading policy: Grades will be based primarily on exams. There will be two in-class exams, each worth 100 points, three quizzes (about 15 minutes) with a total of 100 points, and there will be a final worth 200 points.

The exam dates are 10/5 and 11/10. The final will be Mon. Dec. 14, 2:30-4:20. The quizzes will be scheduled later.

The lowest 100 points worth of your scores will be dropped. (That is, if your lowest score is your total quiz score, the quiz score will be dropped and the final grade will be based on the two exams and the final. If your lowest score is one of the two exams, it will be dropped and your average will be based on the quizzes, the other exam, and the final. If your lowest score is the final (as a percent), the grade will be based on the quizzes, the two exams, and the final exam percent counted as 100 points.)

Computer use: We will use the computer program Minitab in class and for homework. We will primarily use Minitab for Windows, but you can use other versions, such as the Macintosh version. Minitab is available in the student computer labs on campus (which work just like the computer in this classroom). (If you need to work away from campus and you have plenty of money, you can purchase it from MOC. There is also a Student Edition of Minitab that may be available for somewhat less in bookstores.) You should have access to a copy of the Minitab Handbook (but you won't need it daily the way you will the main textbook).

You should have an access account, and should check your e-mail regularly, since announcements (such as a cancelled class) will be made that way. Also, e-mail is often a good way to ask questions if you hit a snag in studying or doing a homework problem.

There is a web site for this course. You can get to it two ways. The first way it to start out at the Penn State home page, select "Colleges", then select "Eberly College of Science", then select "Statistics", then select "Courses", then select "Stat 200H". The alternative is to go directly to the Stat 200H web page:

http://www.stat.psu.edu/~tar/s200h/

Academic integrity: While cooperation is encouraged on homework, this is (obviously) not the case for exams. Any student found copying another's exam, aiding another student to copy theirs, or otherwise violating normal standards of academic integrity, will receive an F for the course and the incident will be reported to the Schreyer Honors College and/or the Judicial Affairs office.

What statistics is about: The word "statistics" comes from the same root as the word "state" and originally referred to keeping numbers about the state, such as census data. Descriptive statistics refers to descriptions of a set of data, such as the average height of the PSU women's varsity volleyball team or the distribution of grades given in Stat 200 last fall.

A very important question in statistics is "What does this data set tell us about the world?" For example, based on a clinical trial, can we say a vaccine for influenza is effective? Descriptive statistics tells us what percentage of the people who got the vaccine got the flu and what percentage of the control group got the flu, but we want to leap beyond the percentages of the sample and say something about the effectiveness of the vaccine on the whole population. In a case like this we can never be absolutely certain whether the vaccine will be effective in reducing incidence of flu in the whole population. But we can use probability theory and make statements like "I am 95% confident that the incidence of flu would be reduced between 18% and 21% if the vaccine were given to the whole population."

This leap from the data (and descriptive statistics about the data) to the population is called inferential statistics, and is the subject of the majority of the course. We will study two types of inferential statistics: tests of hypotheses and confidence intervals. In the vaccine example, deciding if we have strong evidence that the vaccine works is an example of a test of hypothesis. Giving a range of values we are quite sure contains the actual effectiveness of the vaccine is an example of a confidence interval.