Welcome

Welcome to my STAT 657 web site, and to the course. My guess is that most students will have taken a class from me previously, since I teach STAT 554 and STAT 652, and the prerequisite for STAT 657 is that you've had one of these two courses (although exceptions can be made for students who have taken graduate level statistics classes elsewhere).

I plan to run this course a bit differently from 554 and 652. For one thing, as opposed to me lecturing about everything that you're supposed to learn, I want you to make heavy use of the text as a teaching instrument (always reading appropriate parts of the text before coming to the lectures), and in lectures I'll focus on selected parts of the text which I feel are worthy of discussion, and I'll present some related material from alternative sources. But I'll be willing to try to answer any questions that you have about parts of the text that I don't prepare lecture presentations for. So I won't spend a lot of time on easy material in the text which you should be able to understand by reading, and instead I'll spend time on the more difficult material, and make presentations to complement what is in the text.

Also, unlike other courses I've taught where I've distributed very detailed notes about the material that I lecture about, I don't plan to give you such complete notes pertaining to my lecture presentations. When I deviate from the text, or address rather difficult parts of the text, I may supply you with notes, but at the end of the semester, you won't have anything near to a book's worth of material presented in a nice linear manner. But despite the fact that I don't plan to supply copious lecture notes, I think most of you will find the course to be comparatively easier than 554 and 652.

One reason that I don't plan to write detailed notes for this course is that I'll be teaching using a book which I haven't used before. I had hoped that a new edition of the book I had been using for STAT 657 would be ready, but it won't be. However, the book I will be using this semester,
Nonparametric Statistical Methods, 2nd edition, by M. Hollander and D. A. Wolfe (Wiley, 1999),
is a relatively new update of a classic text, and I think that it will serve us quite well (and I suspect that many of you will like this text better than the one which I had hoped to use). Since I do want you to read the text, it's required --- I plan to follow the text rather closely, and make good use of it (which is something that I don't do in some of the other courses that I teach).

In addition to making use of a required text, you will be expected to use StatXact 5 (or somehow obtain the same results that StatXact gives) for a lot of the homework. Since StatXact is not available in any of the GMU computing labs, I've arranged for the company that sells it, Cytel, to make copies available to you at an extremely reduced price. The commercial price of a single copy of StatXact is $1495.00, and they are willing to sell you a copy for $125 (without the manual), or $165 (with the manual). Alternatively, you can get a version of StatXact that will expire in 6 months for $50 (without the manual), or $90 (with the manual). Unless you already have acess to the latest version of StatXact, version 5, I think that you should take advantage of the greatly reduced pricing and buy a copy (for as little as $50). As opposed to you contacting the company directly, they want me to collect the money (make your check payable to GMU Foundation) and place a single order for all of the copies that are desired. So that we can start using the software soon, I plan to submit the order on Friday, September 6, and so you should decide what you want to do and give me a check for the proper amount by Thursday, September 5.