Prof. Ilya Kofman	Office:   1S-209   phone: (718) 982-3615 Email:   ikofmanmath.csi.cuny.edu Website:   http://www.math.csi.cuny.edu/~ikofman/

Course Time and Place:

Mondays:  2:30 - 4:25 in 1S-219 Wednesdays:  2:30 - 3:20 in 1S-219, and 3:35 - 4:25 in 1S-108

Syllabus:  Syllabus (PDF)  for MTH 214, Applied Statistics. Each chapter will take approximately one week.

Textbook:  Moore, McCabe, Craig, Introduction to the Practice of Statistics, 7th Ed., Freeman (2012), ISBN-13: 978-1429240321,  ISBN-10: 1429240326.
Note: This is the first semester using this textbook (7th edition). Available online.

Homework:  Problems assigned from the textbook are listed on the syllabus. Any changes or additional assignments will be announced in class. Answers to odd-numbered exercises are in the back of the book. I highly recommend working jointly on homework problems with fellow students.

StatsPortal:  Publisher's online homework system, available at http://courses.bfwpub.com/ips7e.php. Some homework problems in your textbook have matching StatsPortal problems, which must be submitted online.

Computer Labwork:  We will use the statistical software R for our computations. This software is freely available at www.r-project.org. See below for the computer lab assignments.

Exams:  There will be three in-class exams, Exam 1 on Wednesday, October 3, Exam 2 on Wednesday, November 7, and Exam 3 on Wednesday, December 5.
Review sheets from previous semesters are available at http://www.math.csi.cuny.edu/~poje/Teach/Reviews/index.html. NOTE: Problem 13 on the review sheet for Exam 1 will be covered on Exam 2 this semester.

NEW!  Solutions to Exam 1, Solutions to Exam 2, Solutions to Exam 3, and formulas. For other useful formulas, see Statistics for Dummies.

Grading:  The course grade will be determined as follows:  45% Exams (15% each exam) + 10% StatsPortal HW + 20% Computer Labwork + 25% Final Exam. The single lowest in-class exam score will be replaced by the final exam score if that improves your total score.
Without exception, you must pass the exams to pass this course, and you must take the final exam at the time scheduled by the university.

Help:  My office hours are on Mondays and Wednesdays 11-12:15pm in my office, 1S-209.

How to Study:  (1.) Come to class (attendance is mandatory).  (2.) Read the relevant sections after class.  (3.) Do the homework. Leave yourself time to think about it!  (4.) Compare your solutions with other students.  (5.) Come to office hours or the help room with any remaining questions.

Computer Lab Assignments:

• Lab 1: Dealing with Data. Due Date: Sep 12, 2012


• Lab 2: Histograms & Distributions. Due Date: Sep 19, 2012
  For Lab 2, to install and load the ggplot package, do the following:
  • First, install the package:  >> install.packages("ggplot2")
  • Then, load the library:  >> library("ggplot2")


• Lab 3: Probability with R. Due Date: Oct 24, 2012
  For the last problem in Lab 3, you want to make a list by sampling 1 to 13, and then evaluate each number n in the list: If n < 10 then f(n)=n, else f(n)=10. Here is an example how to apply such a function to a list in R:
  f = function(n) if(n<10){n} else{10}
  x <- c(3, 12, 5, 10, 13)
  sapply(x, f)
  [1] 3 10 5 10 10


• Lab 4: Sampling Distributions in R. Due Date: Oct 24, 2012


• Lab 5: Confidence Intervals in R. Due Date: Oct 31, 2012


• Lab 6: Significance Testing with Random Samples. Due Date: Nov 14, 2012


• Lab 7: Significance Testing with R. Due Date: Nov 28, 2012


• Lab 8: Chi-Square and Regression. Due Date: Dec 12, 2012
  Data for regression

Some related interesting articles:

• Conditional probability by Steven Strogatz in NYT.


• Counting friends by Steven Strogatz in NYT.