Announcements

July 28 (8:54 AM)
Despite going to play poker after the exam (I finished 3rd last night), I have now finished all of the grading, and I recently submitted the final course grades. As I suspected, there was no need to give any grades below B. Here is a summary: Two students got a perfect score on the exam, and another student just barely missed doing so. The class median for the exam is about 67%, which is about what I expected it to be.
July 27 (6:52 PM)
I added a bit more info about Sec. 17.5 to my web page pertaining to Ch. 17.
July 26 (9:35 AM)
I updated the description of Section 2 of the final exam on the web page pertaining to the final exam. Also, yesterday prior to class I modified the notes about Ch. 17. Finally, I won yet another poker tournament last night (earning a small cash prize and a (cheap) trip to Atlantic City).
July 25 (8:48 AM)
I added a link to some notes about Chapter 17 of the text to the lecture supplements web page. (I haven't had a chance to proofread these notes yet. Also, I still need to add some material near the end.)
July 21 (6:59 AM)
I posted the last homework assignment (due 7/27) on the homework web page. (It should be fairly simple to complete.) Also, before class on Thursday, I added a link to some notes about Chapter 16 of the text to the lecture supplements web page.
July 20 (7:31 AM)
I've nearly lost my voice completely due to a severe allergic reaction to new carpet placed in my new office and consulting center in Sci-Tech 2. While I think I can force out a lecture, I won't be able to talk very well, and so I've come up with the following plan for today's class: I'll finish talking about Ch. 16 (and maybe even start Ch. 17), I'll give the last two quizzes (and not give a quiz on Tue), and you'll complete the course evaluation forms. Doing it this way, giving you 10 minutes for each of the two quizzes, and 10 minutes for the course evaluation forms, I can reduce my talking time to 2 hours on Thursday, and then have 2.5 hours to talk next Tuesday when I cover Ch. 17 --- I think it'll be better to get the quizzes and evaluations out of the way when I can't talk very well, and save more time for me to lecture next week when hopefully my voice will be better.
July 19 (6:07 AM)
I fixed up the notes for Chapters 15 and 16 in several places and also corrected the R code for the last bootstrap test that I covered. Also, I added a link to the Ch. 16 notes to the lecture supplements web page. A few people did really well on Tuesday's quiz, and most people got at least 1/2 credit. If I take the best 9 of 11 quiz scores so far for everyone, we have (Note that with regard to the HW scores summary given below (see July 17), since I don't expect students to do real well with the extra credit parts, I'll view the scores as being out of 44 possible points (ignoring 5 extra credit points). So a total of 40 is about 91% and a total of 36 is about 82%.) As for how Tuesday's quiz should have been answered, it can be noted that (12.27) defines g(x) as the integral of a nonnogative function, and since a nonnegative function is being integrted, the value of the integral will increase as the range of integration is increased, or as x becomes larger. (That g is an increasing function also follows from the fact that (12.26) gives that its derivative is positive for all values.) The continuity also follows from the nature of the integration in (12.27). If x is made gradually larger, g(x) will not jump in value (even if the integrand has jump discontinuities). (That g is continuous also follows from the fact that (12.26) gives us that g is everywhere differentiable --- if g was discontinuous at some point, it wouldn't be differentiable there.)
July 18 (10:05 AM)
I added a link to some notes about Chapter 15 of the text to the lecture supplements web page. (I'll add that I won yet another poker tournament last night, which increased my lead over all others in the poker league. With less than 2 weeks to go before the season ends, I feel confident that I'll finish on top in first place.)
July 17 (7:28 AM)
I posted answers to the last two homework assignments I graded on the homework web page. Several people messed up Problem 11 by doing 90% confidence intervals for all parts except for (a) and (c). (To get a 95% c.i. one needs to use the 2.5th and 97.5th percentiles, not the 5th and 95th.) Others didn't follow instructions and came up with answers different from the majority of students who did everything correctly. Here is a summary of the cummulative homework scores through Problem 11: Despite some low homework totals and some low quiz averages, I suspect that there won't be any grades below B this summer (although if someone just does horribly on the final exam I may feel as though I should reconsider). Right now I'm thinking at least half of the students will get an A- or A, and the rest B+ or B (but again, I'll have to wait until after the final exam to firm things up).
July 16 (10:31 AM)
I posted a lot of information about the final exam on this web page pertaining to the final exam. (Note: The plan for the exam should be considered tentative at this point, although I doubt that I will choose to deviate from the description of the exam posted this morning.)
July 16 (1:29 AM)
I added two links to material that I presented in class to the Sec. 13.4 part of the Ch. 13 notes web page. Also, I added two links to material that I presented in class to the Sec. 12.6 part of the Ch. 12 notes web page, along with inserting a more detailed explanation in one place. One of the links in the Sec. 12.6 notes is to answers to Problem 12.4 of E&T. Some parts of that web page may be pertinent to one of the two quizzes next week, both of which will pertain to material in Sec. 12.6. (Both quizzes will be open book, and at least one of them may be a bit more difficult than usual.)
July 14 (7:45 AM)
I added a link to some notes about Chapter 14 of the text to the lecture supplements web page.
July 14 (5:37 AM)
I posted the sixth homework assignment (due 7/20) on the homework web page. (It should be fairly simple to complete.) Also, the correct answer to Thursday's quiz can be found on this web page.
July 12 (3:52 AM)
The correct answers to Tuesday's quiz can be found on this web page.
July 11 (5:35 PM)
I corrected two of the coverage probabilities given in the tables of my Ch. 13 notes web page.
July 11 (8:52 AM)
I added a link to some notes about Chapter 13 of the text (which I plan to cover today) to the lecture supplements web page. (On a personal note I'll add that I had a good weekend playing poker, coming in 3rd place in a tournament on Saturday and winning a tournament on Sunday. With my win Sunday, I regained the lead in my poker league. With less than 3 weeks left in the season, I feel confident that I will maintain my lead and be the league's points leader at the end of the season.)
July 7 (5:09 AM)
I posted the fifth homework assignment (due 7/13) on the homework web page. (It should be fairly simple to complete.) Also, throughout the day on Thursday, 7/7, and in the wee hours of this morning, I made some slight changes to the Ch. 12 notes and associated R code. I also added a link from my Ch. 8 notes to a web page giving a brief tutorial on maximum likelihood estimation and explaining the derivation of the estimate of β in the time series example.
July 5 (6:33 PM)
I put links to R code on my Ch. 12 notes web page and slightly changed the last portion of my Ch. 9 notes web page.
July 4 (2:52 PM)
I changed some things about Problem 10 on the homework web page. I changed 100 trials to 10,000 trials, B to be 800 instead of 50, and specified that the random number seed should be set to 321. With only 100 trials and such a small value for B it's hard to detect any meaningful differences in performance. Because of the changes, Problem 10 will be due on Tuesday 7/11 instead of Thursday 7/6. (But turn in Problems 7. 8, and 9 on Thursday 7/6 (although I'll still give the usual grace period).) Note: Due to the changes in Problem 10, it will take a rather long time (but still a smallish number of minutes instead of hours) to get the results using R.
July 3 (4:54 PM)
I added an alternative way to obtain the jackknife replicates to this R code, which I link to in my Ch. 10 notes. You may find that doing something similar to the alternative technique that I added is a good way to obtain the jackknife replicates needed for HW Problem 9 (Problem 11.12 from E&T).
July 3 (1:45 PM)
I added a link to some notes about Chapter 12 of the text (which I plan to cover on Thursday) to the lecture supplements web page. I still need to add some links to R code to the Ch. 12 notes, but since I anticipate that Sec. 12.6 will be particularly difficult for some of you to understand, I wanted to get my notes posted now so that they can perhaps be of help in understanding Ch. 12.
July 2 (2:16 PM)
I made a slight change on the homework web page. In the note for Problem 10, following the statement of the problem, I had N(0,1) instead of N(1,1) --- so I fixed it to be N(1,1) (to make it match the book).
July 1 (12:58 PM)
Since I got everyone's homework paper by Friday afternoon, I have now finished grading the last homework assignment and have caught up with posting answers on the homework web page. *** It seems like perhaps the majority of the students are getting stressed due to the quizzes. It should be kept in mind that your best 10 of 13 quiz scores will only contibute 10% to your overall score for the course. The homework and the final exam contribute the other 90%. Since I expect everyone's final quiz total (based on best 10 of 13 scores) to be between 5 and 10 at the end, the quizzes will do little to distinguish the A students from the B students. I expect there to be a lot more variation in the homework and final exam scores, and so those components of the overall course score will have a much greater impact on who gets an A and who gets a B than will the quizzes. So ... quit getting overly stressed about the little quizzes!
June 30 (7:06 AM)
I posted the fourth homework assignment (due 7/6) on the homework web page. This one is rather long compared to the previous ones, but it really shouldn't be too hard to complete if you get started on it soon enough. Since we won't have any other breaks after the 4th of July break, I'll avoid making the remaining assignments really long. (The next assignment will be based on just the 7/6 lecture. I don't anticipate that it will be long.)
June 29 (6:35 PM)
Last night I fixed the part about smoothness in my Ch. 10 notes, and this afternoon I made some very minor changes to the Ch. 11 notes. Also, very recently I added a link to the homework web page to the R code I used to obtain answers for Problem 4 of the HW.
June 28 (6:31 PM)
I added a link to some notes about Chapter 11 of the text (which I plan to cover on Thursday) to the lecture supplements web page. I still need to proofread these, but they should be decent in their present form. I need to fix some mistakes about smoothness in my Ch. 10 notes (but I'll do that later).
June 28 (9:20 AM)
I'll write the next quiz on the white board since I want to make two plots for you to examine as you take the quiz. It'll be based on something that I discussed during Tuesday's class meeting, and you will be asked to give a simple explanation of why a particular statement is true. (A good one sentence answer will suffice.) I'll give the quiz at the end of the period since some people may get it quickly and they can then head for home. I plan to start putting the quiz on the board at about 9:45 so that after I explain it you will have 10 minutes to come up with an answer (although if you immediately catch the main point the quiz is based on, giving an answer should only take a minute or two). Uncharacteristically, I went to sleep rather early (for me) last night at about 4:30 AM and have been up since about 7:30 AM. I plan to compose my notes about Ch. 11 today and post them prior to when I leave to play poker. So if you have time to read over the Ch. 11 notes tonight or tomorrow, they should be ready for you then. (All of this assumes that I don't pass out due to heat. The AC for my office broke Monday, and new parts need to be ordered and installed before it will be fixed. (The timing isn't good with the 4th of July holiday coming, which may delay the repairs from being made.) It hasn't been too hot so far, but once the temperature outside hits 80, I expect that my office will hit 80 soon afterwards.)
June 27 (1:22 AM)
I added a link to some notes about Chapter 10 of the text (which I plan to cover on Tuesday, but may not finish) to the lecture supplements web page. I'll have the graded quizzes ready to return, but perhaps I will not have finished grading the homework by the time of Tuesday's class meeting. I want to continue working on the notes for Ch. 11 (for Thursday's class) so that you can go over them ahead of time. It should be noted that my web page notes for Ch. 10 are longer than the ones for the other chapters. Some of the last 60% of Sec. 10.5 of E&T is perhaps a bit complicated, and I wanted to try to help you understand it better. The quiz on Tuesday will be closed book --- it will be about a main point from Ch. 9 that I covered last time.
June 24 (11:06 AM)
I posted the third homework assignment (due 6/29) on the homework web page. You should find this to be the easiest of the three homework assignments so far.
June 23 (2:57 PM)
I realized too late today that I forgot to post new HW problems, and now I have to rush off to a 3 PM seminar. So I'll post a rather short assignment tonight or Saturday, and then perhaps save other problems on this week's material to be turned in after the July 4 break. So please check back later to see if I found a short problem or two to be due this coming Thursday.
June 23 (10:01 AM)
The best way to answer last night's quiz can be found on the bottom portion of this web page. No one came up with it --- one person described creating the combined sample of the pooled residuals, but failed to fully describe how to obtain the bootstrap samples of x and y values. Three people described a valid scheme to meet the criteria that the bootrap world distributions have the same shape, but it isn't the best way to do it because it doesn't make full use of the available information in the original samples. Despite less than perfect answers, I gave these four students full credit. One other student got half credit for perhaps having a method that meets the criteria of having the bootstrap world distributions have the same shape, but the method doesn't make the shape similar to the shape of the real world distributions. Rather than give tiny amounts of partial credit for some of the other answers, I just gave everyone else a score of 0 --- none of the other answers desribed a method to make the bootstrap world distributions have the same shape.
June 22 (6:33 PM)
I made some slight changes/additions to the notes about Chapter 9 of the text, which are linked to from the lecture supplements web page.
June 22 (9:46 AM)
I posted answers to the homework problems submitted last week on the homework web page. Also I made some slight changes in the R code I will go over today pertaining to the cell survival data. Today's quiz will be a bit more involved than most of the previous ones, and so I'll give you at least 10 minutes for it. It's nothing you can really study for, and it doesn't involve calculations. But you might have to think about things for a while before you start writing your answer. Since some things I cover tonight may help you with the quiz (which is based on the first four sections of Ch. 8 of E&T and pertains to creating the estimated probability model for the bootstrap world in a certain situation), I'll give the quiz at the end of class even though some of you are tired by that time. (Perhaps next time I can give the quiz earlier if what I cover in class isn't so pertinent. Even though I will discuss Ch. 9 tonight, something I cover may inspire you to think about the quiz question properly. Even though the quiz is based on some general concept from Ch. 8, in Ch. 9 we are still concerned with creating bootstrap world probability models.)
June 20 (8:37 AM)
I added a link to some notes about Chapter 9 of the text (which I plan to cover on Thursday) to the lecture supplements web page. I'll have the graded quizzes ready to return, but not the homework. I wanted to finish making all of the notes and R demos for Thursday's class so that you can go over them ahead of time. So while I have started dealing with the homework, I won't have it finished until Thursday. I'll remind you that there will be high school graduation ceremonies at GMU's Patriot Center a starting at 7:30 PM on both Tuesday and Thursday this week, and so traffic may be bad near campus between 7:00 PM and 7:30 PM.
June 18 (4:55 PM)
This morning I finished creating R code pertaining to the time series example of Chapter 8 --- so now the links to the R code on my web page notes pertaining to Ch. 8 work. (I wasn't able to announce this in the morning because very shortly after I finished the Ch. 8 stuff I lost my internet connection.)
June 17 (4:38 PM)
I finished adding to the notes I created about Ch. 8. However, the links to the two time series examples don't work yet since I still need to create the R code web pages for them.
June 16 (3:26 AM)
I posted the second homework assignment (due 6/22) on the homework web page. As with the previous assignment, I'll address any questions you have about the problems in class on the Tuesday prior to the due date. (This way, all students hear the same hints and suggestions.) So get started on the homework in order to determine what you don't understand, so that you can ask questions in class on Tuesday.
June 15 (4:29 AM)
I added a link to some notes about the first portion of Chapter 8 of the text to the lecture supplements page. (I may get to this today, but my guess is that I'll cover Ch. 8 on Tue, 6/20.) Also, I changed my office hours to limit them to just 6 to 7 PM prior to class (and eliminated the after class office hours (since by 10 PM I just don't want to deal with a lot of questions)). If it turns out the office hours before class aren't adequate, I may start them earlier on class nights or add office hour time on Mondays or Wednesdays.
June 14 (5:19 AM)
I added a link to some notes about Chapter 7 of the text (which I plan to cover on Thursday) to the lecture supplements page. (The links to the R code and the data which were previously there can now be found on the Ch. 7 notes web page.) The correct answer to Tuesday's quiz is 1/256. If you put 24/256 you'll get partial credit.
June 13 (6:29 PM)
I added a link to some R code and a data set pertaining to a Ch. 7 example to the lecture supplements page. (I may modify the R code later, but since you may find some of it confusing it may be good if you look it over prior to Thursday's class. I'll post my notes about Ch. 7 later, but if you read Ch. 7 before class recall that I said I would focus on the local regression example of Sec. 7.3 and skip the multivarite statistics example of Sec. 7.2.) I also modified the lecture supplements web page to better reflect each night's coverage. (I'll similarly fix the syllabus later, now that I have a better idea about how much material can be reasonably covered during each class period.) Note: On Thursday a high school graduation is scheduled to start in the Patriot Center at 7:30 PM, and so you might encounter heavier than usual traffic as you approach campus, particularly as you approach the Braddock Rd extrances.
June 9 (3:38 AM)
I posted the first homework assignment (due 6/15) on the homework web page. There are just two problems, closely based on Problems from E&T. I suspect that some of you may have difficulty with these. In order to make things fair for everyone (and cut down on e-mail about these problems), please try them before Tuesday's class and ask any questions you have about them at the start of class on Tuesday, as I won't be willing to discuss them with you otherwise. (I'm willing to clarify the statement of the problems outside of class, but not discuss with you how to do them. I may give some hints in class on Tuesday, but don't count on it. It's just that any hints I do give about HW problems will be given during class so that everyone gets the same hints.)
June 8 (3:49 PM)
I added some graphics (qqnorm plots and a histogram) to the 2nd R example based on Ch. 2 --- one that I'll go over in class tonight.
June 8 (7:56 AM)
I added info about the little R book I talked about on Tuesday at the bottom on the home page. I forgot to talk about policies for the quizzes on Tuesday. So here's the deal: quizzes can be given at any time, and missed quizzes cannot be made up. (Overall, your best 10 of 12 or 13 quizzes will count 10% --- so each quiz contibutes at most 1% to your overall course grade.)
June 7 (6:58 AM)
I corrected my R code that goes with Ch. 1 --- I had made the same mistake in two different places. Also, I added code at the bottom of the Ch. 2 R stuff that I went over, showing how one can use R's qqnorm function to make probit plots the way I like them. I'll announce that the quiz for Thursday will consist of one multiple choice question for which you are to identify the two correct choices out of six that are given. It'll be based on something from pp. 1-5 or pp. 10-12 of E&T that I covered in class on Tuesday. The plan for Thursday is that during the first part of class I'll finish going over my web page notes for Ch. 2 and work Problem 2.5 on the board. You may want to try this problem on your own before I show how to do it. (Note: In the statement of the problem it should be as B (and not n) goes to infinity.) During the second part of class I'll go over my web page notes for Ch. 3 through Ch. 5. (Then next week we'll cover Ch. 6 on Tuesday and maybe start Ch. 7, which will be finished on Thursday.) I will hold off posting the first homework assignment until after Thursday's class, but one of the problems will be based on Problem 2.4 (b) on p. 16 of E&T ... if you are anxious to get started on something. This problem will be one that I'll specify you should do on your own (with perhaps some hints I'll give), and so you should not discuss it with anyone else.
June 6 (6:23 PM)
I made some minor changes to my notes about Ch. 1 and Ch. 3 of E&T. (In the Ch. 3 notes I only corrected a typo --- I had an extra letter in a word.) Also, I'll announce that I plan to give a quiz on Thursday (given only about a 1% weight in the overall grading scheme) and it will be closed book.
June 6 (7:15 AM)
I added a link to some notes about Chapter 6 of the text to the lecture supplements page.
June 5 (12:53 AM)
I added a link to some brief notes about Chapter 5 of the text to the lecture supplements page.
June 4 (6:26 PM)
I added a link to some brief notes about Chapter 4 of the text to the lecture supplements page.
June 4 (3:33 AM)
I added a link to some brief notes about Chapter 3 of the text to the lecture supplements page.
June 4 (1:55 AM)
I've added links to notes about Chapters 1 and 2 of the text to the lecture supplements page, and I intend to create more notes about the book prior to Tuesday's class. Also, I made some minor changes to the instructions about installing R which can be found near the bottom of this class web site's home page. (Please try to install R on your computer prior to the first class meeting.) I'll also announce that there will be no quiz the first class meeting, and that high school graduations will be held in the Patriot Center on campus on June 15, June 20, and June 22, and since these graduations are scheduled to start at 7:30 PM, you may encounter heavy traffic near and on campus those evenings if you drive to GMU for class (with the traffic near the Braddock Rd. entrances to campus being particularly bad).
May 29 (2:43 AM)
Please see the welcome page for advice about what you should do to prepare for the first lecture. Also, please carefully read the syllabus.