Announcements

December 10, 2002 (4:24 AM)
I've posted some more information about the exam on my final exam information web page. The new information is in bright green. My current guess is that I won't add any more comments about the exam (unless I spot something that's wrong on my web page). I'll now turn my attention to trying to create an exam that matches the description I've provided, and isn't too hard --- I plan to make some of the questions very easy in order to have an exam that you shouldn't feel so rushed to complete.
December 8, 2002 (6:44 PM)
I've posted some information about the exam and my availability on my final exam information web page.
December 5, 2002 (5:29 PM)
Since our last class was cancelled, and it doesn't seem reasonable to try to make it up, I'll alter my plan for the final exam to exclude what I had intended to cover tonight. I'll make the HW exercises that were previously assigned, but based on the material that I needed to finish up tonight, into bonus exercises, having any earned points contribute to the numerator, but not having the point values contribute to the denominator. I'll try to post some information about the final exam soon, and then I'll add more details to the study suggestions I give once I firm up the specific questions/problems. The exam will be based on material related to Chapters 3 through 9 of H&W. (It's too bad that our last class meeting was cancelled, since I wanted to tie up a few loose ends from previous meetings. However, the material in Chapters 10 and 11 of H&W is not mainstream nonparametric statistics, and so we did in fact cover all of the crucial parts of H&W (and some not so crucial parts as well).)
December 4 (my birthday (don't ask)), 2002 (4:21 AM)
I've posted HW solutions through Exercise 22 on the solutions web page. I also updated the reading guide. The forecast for Thursday calls for snow. If it does snow, please check official GMU sources (as opposed to counting on me to inform you) to determine if classes have been cancelled --- unless the university cancels the evening classes, I plan to present the last lecture of the semester on Thursday. If we do get snowed out, I'll have to make adjustments to what I had planned for the final exam. Because I think there is a good possibility of a cancellation, and I don't think we can make up the class unless the university designates an official make-up day, I'll hold off until after Thursday night with making up a small study guide for the final. Then, shortly after Thursday, I'll post some hints about what to prepare for on this web site.
November 21, 2002 (4:44 AM)
I've posted the last HW exercises that I'll assign you this semester on the homework web page. (These last exercises should not take long to do.)
November 20, 2002 (2:04 AM)
I've posted some comments about Ch. 10 on my new comments about Ch. 10 of H&W web page. I'll add more comments later. I also updated the reading guide.
November 14, 2002 (5:55 AM)
I added some more comments about Sec. 9.6 on my comments about Ch. 9 of H&W web page. The newly added comments are in green so that you can easily spot them. Also, I posted some more HW exercises on the homework web page. These newly posted exercises, and the ones which I will post next week, will be due at the time of the final exam. You can note that I made the point values very small for the parts that you may have to do using Minitab on the mainframe, so that you won't be drastically penalized if you should choose not to bother with them.
November 10, 2002 (10:39 AM)
I updated the reading guide, and posted some more comments about Ch. 9 of H&W.
(Not really related to the course, but since I know that at least two people from STAT 657 attended my 11/1 seminar on the work I did for the GMU basketball coach, I'll add some links to some related web pages that I created. This one gives some performance measures for individual players, and this one contains a description of how my (currently incomplete) system for measuring a player's overall value to the team works.)
November 7, 2002 (7:02 PM)
I forgot to add to my announcements of early this morning, that last night I also corrected my information on my StatXact web page about doing the one-way layout version of Page's test (using the Linear-by-Linear Association test).
November 7, 2002 (5:22 AM)
I added to the homework web page, and the homework solutions web page. I also posted some comments about Sec. 8.5 on my comments about Ch. 8 of H&W web page.
November 4, 2002 (1:15 PM)
I updated the reading guide, and posted some comments about Ch. 9 of H&W.
October 26, 2002 (2:55 AM)
On Friday, Nov. 1, at 10:45 AM, I'll be giving a seminar about some of the analysis that I did for the GMU men's basketball coach. It'll be a somewhat light talk, but perhaps more interesting than most of the talks in the Friday morning seminar series. Here is the abstract for my seminar. Someone recently inquired about homework scores, and so I decided to tally up the points at this time (through what I returned on Thursday, and so not including the problems that were due on Thursday (since I haven't graded those yet)). I summed everyone's points so far, and used the formula presented here to produce a value on a scale of 0 to 60 for each student. (The scale being based on 60 points is due to the fact that HW counts 60% and the final exam 40%.) To apply the formula, I used m = 85 (even though it would have been possible for someone to have earned 90 points so far because of 5 extra credit points (that count for the numerator, but not the denominator)). Due to my scheme of making an allowance for missing/skipping some parts of the HW, one only needs 90% or more of the 85 points (or at least 76.5 points) to achieve the maximum possible HW score so far. Six of the 12 students who are taking the course for a grade are currently at 60 (the maximum possible score), and the other 6 scores (rounded to the nearest integer in some cases) are 59, 55, 52, 49, 44, and 42. For those of you who aren't doing as well as the others, I suggest that you try to work on the HW exercises well enough in advance of when they are due so that you can ask questions about whatever uncertainties that you may have about the proper procedures. It is my hope that I can give higher than usual letter grades for this course, like I did this past summer.
October 24, 2002 (5:32 AM)
I posted a bunch of new HW problems on the homework web page. Please note that for a test based on a multiple comparison procedure, there is just one "overall" p-value (and not k choose 2 different p-values). Ask me about this if you don't understand.
October 24, 2002 (1:27 AM)
Even though nobody asked for any additional information, I posted some comments about the test corresponding to part (b) of Exercise 15 on my StatXact hints web page.
October 23, 2002 (5:30 AM)
I posted some more solutions on the homework solutions web page. I also posted some comments pertaining to Exercise 16, Exercise 17, and Exercise 18 on the homework web page. In particular, for Exercise 16, I added a reminder that you're supposed to report two approximate p-values for each part; one based on not using a continuity correction, and one based on using a continuity correction. I'll add that I'm starting to like H&W a bit more now, in part because it presents some useful tests that one doesn't see covered in too many places.
October 22, 2002 (4:24 AM)
I completed my comments about Ch. 7 of H&W. I've also updated the reading guide, adding some information at the very bottom of the page (as it now exisits) giving some loose indication of how extensively I plan to cover some of the sections in Ch. 7. (Note: We may not finish going over Ch. 7 in class this week since it is a rather long chapter. If this is the case, I'll cut short the time I had planned to spend on Ch. 10, and otherwise allocate the class time as I've indicated on the syllabus.) In order to help make sure everyone understands the notation and general approach, I plan to go through a small example and calculate the value of the Doksum test statistic. I encourage you to take the small set of values below and compute the value of the Doksum test statistic before coming to class.
treatment 1 treatment 2 treatment 3
block 1 45 140 235
block 2 50 106 202
block 3 39 76 60
block 4 70 220 373
block 5 10 24 44
October 21, 2002 (4:44 PM)
I added to my comments about Ch. 7 of H&W, covering through Sec. 7.9. I plan to continue adding to my Ch. 7 comments some more tonight. I've also updated the reading guide, adding some information at the very bottom of the page (as it now exisits) giving some loose indication of how extensively I plan to cover some of the sections in Ch. 7.
October 21, 2002 (6:25 AM)
I added to my comments about Ch. 7 of H&W, covering through Sec. 7.7. I plan to continue adding to my Ch. 7 comments as I work throughout the day.
October 20, 2002 (4:50 AM)
Saturday afternoon at about 3 PM, my e-mail mailbox got full due to way too much spam, and I didn't get it taken care of until about 8 PM. So if you tried to send e-mail to me between about 3 and 8 PM on Saturday, you may very well need to resend it. (I think at this point I have no STAT 657 e-mail that I haven't responded to, so if you're waiting to get a reply from me, you had better e-mail me again.) By the way, be sure to always put STAT 657 in the subject line of any e-mail message that you send to me so that I can better identify it as nonspam. (The spam problem is horrible. An old address like mine has made its way onto many lists by now. Filters prevent some spam from getting through, but spammers seem to always come up with schemes to get things past filters, and so I tend to get about 4 spam messages per hour. So if I don't get to my mailbox for over 24 hours, and especially if some student sends me an inappropriately large file, my mailbox can get full and no new e-mail can be received. Since on some days spam outnumbers legit e-mail at about a 10:1 ratio, particularly on the weekends, you need to remember to clearly identify yourself as a STAT 657 student in the subject line of any e-mail message that you send.) Also, an observant student caught a mistake I made on my solution to Exercise 10, in the part dealing with the normal scores test. My silly mistake didn't cause the approximate p-value to be different from what it should have been when rounded to 2 significant digits, but the exact p-value was off by 1 in the 2nd significant digit. I don't think anyone had points taken off because of my mistake, but if you had 0.012 for part (c) and seemed to not get full credit, turn your paper back in so that I can make a proper adjustment. I also updated the reading guide.
October 17, 2002 (6:25 PM)
I added one more HW Exercise (to be due in 2 weeks) to the homework web page.
October 17, 2002 (5:20 AM)
I added one more HW solution to the homework solutions web page, and I posted one new HW Exercise on the homework web page. I'll report that for the last bunch of HW exercises that I graded (25 points worth), the class median is 20 and the class mean is about 19.54.
October 16, 2002 (6:36 AM)
I added some more HW solutions to the homework solutions web page over the past two nights.
October 15, 2002 (12:55 AM)
I added some comments about Exercise 12 to the homework web page. Hopefully, the comments make it more clear what I am looking for.
October 14, 2002 (12:31 PM)
I added some comments about Exercise 13 to the homework web page. I'll try to add some other information about the homework tonight or tomorrow.
October 14, 2002 (9:19 AM)
I added to my comments about Ch. 7 of H&W, covering through Sec. 7.4 (which is how far I expect to get in class this week). I also updated the reading guide. and added to the StatXact web page. I plan to post some comments related to the homework later this morning, so check back later and perhaps you'll find my comments to be helpful if you don't know for sure what is expected.
October 13, 2002 (5:31 AM)
I posted some comments about Sec. 7.1 of H&W on my comments about Ch. 7 of H&W web page. Also, I'll let you know that one of the people in the class let me know that one can indeed copy and paste on the Case Data sheet. Just highlight the desired data using the mouse, and use the Edit menu to copy --- then click on where you want to put the copied part and use the Edit menu to paste. (I was trying to use the left mouse button to copy and paste, but that doesn't work.)
October 10, 2002 (4:52 AM)
I added to my comments about Ch. 6 of H&W. I also updated the reading guide. and added to my StatXact hints web page (which I also added to yesterday, but forgot to put in the announcements). When grading homework this past weekend, I realized that I had forgotten to record the scores on the papers that I returned to you last time. I have the values, because I had computed things like the mean score, but I didn't put any names with the values. So could you please bring your graded paper with you to class and let me get the score off of it, or just e-mail me your score if you have your paper handy by the computer at home or work?
October 9, 2002 (5:22 AM)
I added to my comments about Ch. 6 of H&W, and plan to add more comments later (like late Wed. night or early Thurs. morning). I also posted some more exercises on the homework web page.
October 6, 2002 (12:46 AM)
I posted homework solutions to Exercises 4 through 7 on the solutions web page. The scores on the second set of exercises were pretty good for the most part, with 8 of 12 students getting at least 27.5 (out of 30 --- so better than 90%). The class median is 28.25, and the class mean is about 25.17. Since you always have at least 2 weeks for the HW exercises (except at the end of the semester when you will only have one week for whatever exercises are assigned during the last week of class before the exam), I encourage you to try to do each exercise by one week after it is assigned so that you can ask about whatever you discover that you don't fully understand.
October 3, 2002 (5:46 PM)
I decided to make Exercise 2 (that I graded and plan to return to you in class tonight) an extra credit problem (which basically means that the points you earn from it count towards your total points earned, but I don't count the 5 points it is worth in the "denominator sum"). I decided to do this before I graded the papers because I realized that I didn't talk to you very much about the confidence interval the problem dealt with. But I was pleased to see that many of you got it correct! All in all, the scores for the first 3 exercises (out of 10 points, since the points you earn are the extra credit exercise (Exercise 2) are pure "bonus" points) were very good: I edited the homework web page and this web page to reflect the extra credit status of Exercise 2 and explain how the extra credit points will be handled. I also added one more exercise to the homework web page.
October 3, 2002 (6:15 AM)
I posted some homework solutions on the solutions web page, and plan to return some graded work to you tonight (but I haven't gotten everything graded yet). Since I had hoped to give you feedback on the second set of problems that you turned in before you had to submit the problems due tonight, I'll let you turn in the problems that were to be due tonight next Thursday (with the extended deadline being the following Monday). (This way, I can return your graded homework to you on 10/10 and you can study the solutions to them and turn in your work by the following Monday if you aren't confident in what you have done.) I also updated the homework web page to show the problem I'll distribute in class tonight, and I've created a web page giving StatXact hints that I'll add to as the semester continues.
October 2, 2002 (6:00 AM)
I posted some comments about Ch. 6 of H&W, and also updated the reading guide.
September 28, 2002 (2:52 AM)
I updated the homework web page, created a web page giving a Minitab macro for the jackknife test of Sec. 5.2 of H&W, and fixed some minor typos and errors in grammer that "Eagle Eye" reported to me (thanks, Kathy).
September 26, 2002 (5:57 AM)
I added some comments about Sec. 5.2 to my comments about Ch. 5 of H&W web page. (I found Ch. 5 to be the most interesting chapter in H&W so far. I hope that you enjoyed it as well.)
September 25, 2002 (5:55 AM)
I posted some comments about Ch. 5 of H&W, but haven't added any comments about Sec. 5.2 yet. I also edited the reading guide (but only made a couple of small changes).
September 23, 2002 (5:25 AM)
I updated the reading guide. I'll post some comments about Ch. 5 of the text over the next 48 hours.
September 17, 2002 (10:24 AM)
I added comments about Sec. 4.2 to my webpage which gives comments about Ch. 4 of H&W, which completes the comments that I had planned to post for this chapter (although there is a possibility that I may decide to add some more comments later).
September 17, 2002 (7:43 AM)
I added to my comments about Ch. 4 of H&W, but I still have to add some comments about Sec. 4.2. I also updated the reading guide. Yesterday I corrected two minor typos that a student spotted, and I also came up with a new color scheme for my web pages about the chapters of the text, so that if you print them you can get easy-to-read black text on a white background.
September 16, 2002 (11:07 AM)
I started typing in some comments about Ch. 4 of H&W in the wee hours of the morning and I will continue adding to what I have so far throughout the day. I encourage you to use StatXact to obtain p-values for some of the examples from H&W, e.g., Example 4.1 on pp. 110-111. (My comments about Ch. 4 of H&W provide you with some instructions pertaining to this example.)
September 12, 2002 (5:26 AM)
I added 4 more homework exercises (due Sep. 26 & Oct. 3) to the homework web page.
September 11, 2002 (3:33 AM)
I added more comments about Ch. 3 of H&W, for Sections 3.7 through 3.11. I'll discuss some of the posted comments in class this week, as well as present some other material related to Ch. 3. I also updated the reading guide.
September 9, 2002 (5:03 AM)
I didn't get around to posting my comments about the rest of Ch. 3 yet, but I'll try to do it soon. (I'm not going to have near as many comments about the last part of Ch. 3 as I did about the first part of Ch. 3.) As you read the rest of Ch. 3, don't be too concerned about the details of the rarely-used tests presented in Sections 3.9 and 3.10 --- I certainly don't plan to emphasize those tests. I encourage you to get started on the HW, and to prepare some questions to ask about the first 3 chapters, if you find that there are parts that you don't understand. Finally, I'll report to you that the StatXact order was placed on Friday, but since the person in charge of shipping wasn't working on Friday (StatXact is produced by a small company), the order won't be mailed out until today, and it may not arrive in time for me to distribute the software during class this week. (Since 10 people ordered the heavy two volume manual set, it would cost too much to have the shipment sent using overnight delivery. (The department secretary has already scolded me for not adding any shipping fee to the prices I gave you.)
September 3, 2002 (5:48 AM)
I posted some homework exercises (not due until Sep. 19 & Sep. 26) on the homework web page. I may add more exercises to be due on Sep. 26 if the StatXact shipment arrives. Remember to bring your check with you on Thursday if you want to order any StatXact stuff.
September 3, 2002 (2:50 AM)
I added more comments about Ch. 3 of H&W, either finishing, or coming close to finishing, what I wanted to post prior to this week's lecture. Also, for user convenience, I added links to my comments about various chapters of H&W at the bottom of this web site's home page.
September 2, 2002 (6:02 AM)
I made some comments about Ch. 3 of H&W. (The comments pertain to the first part of the reading from Ch. 3 that you're supposed to do prior to this week's lecture. I'll add some more comments later, but most of the more invloved comments pertain to the first part of this week's reading.)
August 31, 2002 (8:29 PM)
I made a couple of very minor changes to my comments about Ch. 2 of H&W, but nothing of importance. (Thanks again go to "Eagle Eye" Harrison, for spotting a minor mistake (I omitted the word is in one place). Please point out such little things to me. Even though I may not use H&W again, I'd still like to have a nice set of web page comments about each chapter of the book.) Below are a few more comments for today.
August 30, 2002 (1:47 AM)
I edited the reading guide to show what you are supposed to read before next week's class. On that web page you'll also find links to my comments about the material covered by this week's lecture, and I encourage you to read those comments if you haven't done so already. You should note that my web site comments are intended to complement the lecture, and not duplicate it. So there will be topics covered in class that aren't in my web site notes, and there will be comments on the web site that aren't made in class. (Also, be sure to read the syllabus and related web pages like this one giving information about HW if you haven't done so already.) I think that it might be a good idea to lug the big H&W book to the class each time --- since I don't plan to give out lecture notes, when I explain some of the details in the text, you might want to have it to look at, and perhaps jot down a note or two in the margins. (Also, if you do plan to bring your book to class, you might want to put the check for your StatXact purchase in the book, since you'll want to be sure to give me your check next time so that you don't miss out on the sweet deal for the software.)
August 27, 2002 (3:57 AM)
I edited my web page giving information about homework, adding comments about turning in HW late, and about the presentation of HW solutions.
August 27, 2002 (2:22 AM)
I added some comments about the Chapter 2 of the text. During the first lecture, most of the time that I spend on Ch. 2 will be related to Sec. 2.3, which deals with confidence intervals.
August 26, 2002 (4:28 AM)
I added some comments about the Preface of the text, and some comments about the Chapter 1 of the text, and added links to these two web pages in the reading guide.
August 25, 2002 (3:45 PM)
I added a comment to the Additional Comments section towards the bottom of the syllabus (see the 3rd bullet, about putting STAT 657 in the subject line of e-mail messages).
August 21, 2002 (1:29 AM)
I added a bit of information about the homework component of your grade. I also corrected a few typos and made some very minor changes here and there. (When I make very minor changes, like fixing typos or changing fonts or colors, I won't give the details here. But I will announce any important changes.) Thanks to Kathy Harrison for finding my typos. (I'll find some of Kathy's mistakes later.)
August 20, 2002 (5:42 AM)
I have an extra copy of the text (new, never been used) that I will sell to someone for an even $100.00 (cash --- I don't like to deal with checks). Amazon.com and the Wiley web site both list the book for $105.00, and I believe that was the price at the GMU bookstore. (Btw, there are plently of the text books on the shelf at the bookstore. If you don't want to save $5.00 by buying my extra copy, you might want to come over to GMU before classes start next week and buy the book, since the bookstore lines can get very long during the first week of classes.)
August 20, 2002 (4:40 AM)
Tonight I created the syllabus (but I may add some details about the homework and grading later).
August 2, 2002
Please read the information on the welcome page and check back later for the syllabus and other information.