Announcements

2:17 PM, Dec. 14, 2018
I've now submitted the final course grades to Patriot Web. I was very happy that someone got a perfect score of 50 on the final exam (and earned an A+ for the semester), and there were also scores of 45.9, 44.8, and 41.45 (and of course other scores that weren't as good). *** Also, I had previosuly posted the answers of the homework exercise you turned in earlier this week on the homework solutions web page (but I forgot to announce it when I posted them).
12:04 PM, Dec. 8, 2018
I posted the answers of the homework exercise you turned in this week on the homework solutions web page.
3:33 PM, Nov. 30, 2018
I posted the answer (and explanation for it) of the homework exercise you turned in this week on the homework solutions web page.
7:49 PM, Nov. 16, 2018
I wish that class had not been cancelled yesterday, but now we'll all just have to deal with it. The official make-up day has been specified to be Monday, Dec. 10. The homework that was due on 11/15 is now due on 11/29. The homework that was due on 11/29 is now due on 12/6. The homework that was originally planned to be due on 12/6 is now due on 12/10 (and you're all welcome to take advantage of a grace period that ends at 10 PM on Tuesday 12/11). *** The only good thing about all of this is that you'll have several extra days to finish the homework (since instead of the last due date being 12/6 (as was originally to be the case), it's now 12/10). But really this isn't so great, because the date of the final exam is still 12/13, and during the days leading up to the exam you should be preparing for it rather than working on homework. Sooo... in order to make sure you don't have to cram too much STAT 657 work into the several days leading up to the final exam, I recommend that you try to finish the homework that is now not due until 12/6 by Thanksgiving Day! That homework is based on material that I mostly covered last week and you should just go ahead and try to get it completed soon. Then between Thanksgiving and our next class meeting on 11/29, I recommend that you read the Ch. 10 lecture notes and either start on the homework that is due 12/10, or start studying for the final exam. Study guidelines for the exam have been posted on this web page. After you read the Ch. 10 notes you can either focus on Ch. 10 material pertinent to the exam, or focus on the material prior to Ch. 10 that the study guidelines indicate is important. But, in any case, I recommend that you spend a lot of time between now and our next class meeting trying to get way ahead in your STAT 657 work, since otherwise you may feel very pressured in December trying to finish the homework and study for the exam. *** (Note: We have 3 more lectures. About 1.5 of them will be spent on Ch. 10, and the rest of the time will be divided between Ch. 11 and Ch. 12. There are a lot of homework exercises based on the Ch. 10 material that will be due on Mon 12/10. The exercises based on Ch. 11 and Ch. 12 are all extra credit. If you've been doing well on the homework this semester, you might be better off skipping most (or all) of those extra credit exercises and instead focus on preparing for the exam. The extra credit exercises are available if you want to do them, but you shouldn't feel pressured to do them. Altogether there will have been a total of 174 regular homework points that one could have earned, as well as 20 extra credit points. Since I'll divide the total points you earn by 0.9(174) = 156.6 to determine your overall homework grade for the class, altogether if you earn 156.6 of the total of 194 available points you'll get the maximum possible homework grade of 50 points (and the exam will contribute the other 50 points of your final score for the class). So, all in all, you can max out your homework score by just earning slightly over 80% of the available points, and you can still easily be in contention for an A in the class (provided you do well enough on the final exam) if you only earn about 145 homework points (which is slightly less than 75% of the total of 194 homework points one could have possibly earned). So while there are a lot of exercises due in December (some of which were assigned last week), you should keep in mind that you may not have to do them all in order to get a good homework grade for the class, and you might be better off spending more time preparing for the final exam. Again, the homework exercises are there if you want to do them, but please don't feel pressured to do them all if you want more time to study for the exam.) *** I've now added the rest of the homework problems for the semester to the on the homework web page, and I've added info about using StatXact for Ch. 10, 11, and 12 procedures to the web page pertaining to StatXact.
6:05 AM, Nov. 12, 2018
Yesterday I posted answers for the homework exercises you turned in this week on the homework solutions web page. *** Also, I posted a lot of information pertaining to the final exam on the web page pertaining to the final exam. (Please note that the exam is open book and notes, and you can use a calculator but not a computer.) There you can see that most of the True/False and multiple choice questions pertain to the two-sample tests of Chapters 6-9, and most of the problems that you are to solve for the other portion of the exam pertain to Ch. 10. (Note: I haven't finalized the final yet, but I looked at what I had done in previous years, and decided that I'd make an exam based on the same set of guidelines I used previously. This stategy allows me to go ahead and post the study guidelines for you now. (Now I just have to come up with exam problems to match the study guidelines.))
5:28 PM, Nov. 9, 2018
I posted some new HW problems on the homework web page.
5:35 AM, Nov. 9, 2018
I've had quite a lot of extra work this week, and so I'll be late posting the new homework problems ... but I should have everything posted by Friday night (or the wee hours of Sat morning at the latest).
6:06 AM, Nov. 2, 2018
I posted some new HW problems on the homework web page, and I also posted answers for the homework exercises you turned in this week on the homework solutions web page. In addition, I added some material pertinent to Ch. 8 and Ch. 9 of the text to the web page pertaining to StatXact.
9:48 PM, Oct. 26, 2018
I posted answers for the homework exercises you turned in this week on the homework solutions web page.
3:45 AM, Oct. 26, 2018
I posted some new HW problems on the homework web page, and I also added some material pertinent to Ch. 6 of the text to my web page pertaining to StatXact. (Note: I'll post the answers to the homework turned in this week later today.)
3:59 AM, Oct. 19, 2018
I posted some new HW problems on the homework web page, and I also posted answers for the homework exercises you turned in this week on the homework solutions web page. In addition, I added some material pertinent to Ch. 5 of the text to my web page pertaining to StatXact. *** I've already graded the homework turned in this week. Altogether, there were 84 points worth of homework problems on the first six assignments, along with the possibility to earn up to 5 extra credit points. So the maximumm number of points anyone could have earned so far would be 89 points (including the extra credit points). At the end of the semester, I'll divide the total number of points you earn by 90% of the total number of regular homework points (so not counting extra credit points) assigned to determine your homework percentage. So, for example, if the semester ended today, I'd divide the number of points you've earned through this week by 0.9(84) = 75.6. So if you've earned at least 75.6 points, you'd be considered to have a perfect homework average. To be on track to get a B or better in the class, you should have earned about 64 homework points so far (counting the homework I just graded (that you haven't gotten returned to you yet)). Here is a summary of the points earned so far by the 9 members of the class: So, for the most part, the class is doing fine of the homework.
1:14 AM, Oct. 12, 2018
I posted some new HW problems on the homework web page, and I also posted answers for the homework exercises you turned in this week on the homework solutions web page.
8:13 PM, Oct. 6, 2018
The scores on the HW you turned in Thursday were generally much worse than in previous weeks. There were 20 regular points to be earned, plus the possibility for an additional extra credit point. Here is a summary of the scores: A big problem was some did a two-tailed test when a one-tailed test was appropriate, or did the wrong one-tailed test. If one is seeking evidence of trending, then it makes sense to reject the null hypothesis when R is small, or L is large. So the p-value would simply be of the form P(R <= r), or P(L >= l). If one is looking for evidence of a greater tendency for alternation between large and small values in the data stream, then it makes sense to reject for large R and small L. So the hypotheses that lead to one-tailed tests are easier to deal with than those that lead to two-tailed tests. For two-tailed tests, we reject for large values of |R - E(R)|, but for one-tailed tests there is no need to consider any absolute values, and one doesn't even have to determine the value of E(R) or E(L) under the null hypothesis. My advice is to see what the HW problems are requesting, and then read over the course notes again before plunging in and getting your answers ... and be sure to ask about anything you are uncertain about.
10:11 AM, Oct. 5, 2018
I posted some new HW problems on the homework web page, and I also posted solutions for the homework exercises you turned in this week on the homework solutions web page.
5:29 AM, Sep. 28, 2018
I posted solutions for the homework exercises you turned in this week on the homework solutions web page. *** Shortly before class this week, I posted some new HW problems based on the Ch. 4 material covered in this week's lecture on the homework web page, and I also added some material pertinent to Ch. 4 of the text to my web page pertaining to StatXact. *** I've already graded the homework turned in this week. Altogether, there were 43 points worth of homework problems on the first three assignments, along with the possibility to earn up to 3 extra credit points. So the maximumm number of points anyone could have earned so far would be 46 points (including the extra credit points). At the end of the semester, I'll divide the total number of points you earn by 90% of the total number of regular homework points (so not counting extra credit points) assigned to determine your homework percentage. So, for example, if the semester ended today, I'd divide the number of points you've earned through this week by 0.9(43) = 38.7. So if you've earned at least 38.7 points, you'd be considered to have a perfect homework average. To be on track to get a B or better in the class, you should have earned about 33 homework points so far (counting the homework I just graded (that you haven't gotten returned to you yet)). Here is a summary of the points earned so far by the 10 members of the class: 7 out of 10 students have earned at least 38.7 points, and the median number of points earned by the 10 students is 42.7. So, for the most part, the class is doing fine of the homework, but a few of you should try to avoid so many mistakes and do better. (My hope is that once the homework makes more use of software, the homework scores should go up a bit.)
9:49 PM, Sep. 21, 2018
I posted solutions for the homework exercises you turned in this week on the homework solutions web page. *** Also, I added some material pertinent to Ch. 3 of the text to my web page pertaining to StatXact. There you'll find a data analysis example based on the data given on p. 3-32 of the class notes. Towards the bottom of this example are (very simple) instructions for how to get StatXact to do the common runs test based on the number of runs when the data is dichotomized using a cut-off value (e.g., the sample median). This is the only test covered in Ch. 3 that StatXact will do, but in the remaining chapters that we'll cover we'll use StatXact to do most of the tests that we cover in class.
4:18 AM, Sep. 21, 2018
I posted the next set of homework exercises (which are due 10/4) on the homework web page. (Note: In class I said I might have you do some of the tests as two-tailed tests and some as one-tailed tests. But this time I'm calling for all of the tests to be one-tailed tets.)
1:52 AM, Sep. 15, 2018
I posted solutions for the homework exercises you turned in this week on the homework solutions web page that I've created. I've already graded the papers, and for the most part the class did fine. There were 7 regular HW points to be earned, along with 1 possible extra credit point. The median score for the class is 6.9, and the mean score is 6.29. (The extra credit problem caused the most trouble ... some of you didn't seem to understand what I was looking for.)
7:22 AM, Sep. 14, 2018
I posted the next set of homework exercises (which are due 9/27) on the homework web page. Except for the first of these exercises, for which you don't have to show any work, you should show adequate work to provide justification for your final answers.
1:25 AM, Sep. 7, 2018
I posted the next set of homework exercises (which are due 9/20) on the homework web page. (You should try to get these done by next week since I'll be posting more exercises in about another week.) For these exercises you should show adequate work to provide justification for your final answers.
2:54 AM, Aug. 31, 2018
I posted the first few homework exercises on the homework web page. Your solutions to thse exercises are due on September 13, but you should try to get them done by next week since I'll be posting more exercises (due 9/20) in about another week. For Exercises 2, 3, and 4 you can just give your final answers without showing any work, but for Exercise 1 you should provide justification for your final answer.
12:21 AM, Aug. 7, 2018
I have udpated the welcome page to indicate how you can get a copy of the software at a greatly reduced cost ($25 instead of $1125). Basically, you just need to give me $25 in cash, or a check for $25 made out to Clifton D. Sutton, by the night of our 2nd class meeting (Sep. 6). (If you want to pay with cash, please bring the exact amount. I might not be able to give you change if say you hand me two $20 bills.)
5:10 PM, July 29, 2018
I have now udpated the web site for the course to get it ready for the start of the upcoming fall semester. I plan to add to it as the semester progresses. For now, please read the information on the welcome page and the syllabus before the first class meeting, as well as Ch. 1 and the first half of Ch. 2 of the text. *** I advise you you allow for plenty of time to find a parking spot during the first couple of weeks of classes since there are generally more cars on campus during these weeks. *** You might find the last post (see below) from my Fall 2008 offering of this course to be of interest. The grades were quite good on the whole, and I felt great about the class because the students seemed to do the homework on their own (as opposed to treating it as a group project) and they did not pester me with many questions about the homework (but instead took it upon themselves to work harder if they were having problems). It should also be noted that 2 out of 7 students got nearly a perfect score on the final exam, indicating that it was not an unreasonably hard test. (The results from my 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016 classes were similar.)
7:07 PM, December 11, 2008
I just submitted the final grades (2 A+, 1 A, 1 A-, 2 B+, 1 B). The top scores on the final were 39.9 and 39.8 (out of 40). I want to thank you for being one of the best classes I have ever had ... not just in terms of doing good work, but also because there was no begging for help or favors, or asking for unfair exceptions, and there was absolutely no complaining.