The schedule of topics has been posted at http://stats.jjw3.com/math1431/Sp10math1431HAssigns.htm and has been uploaded to iCollege.
Here is a brief description of the topics we have covered in class:
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
We discussed the purpose of statistics, collection of data through questionnaires, and types of data (Section 1.1).
Thursday, 14 January 2010
We discussed measures of central tendancy (Section 3.1), measures of spread or dispersion (Section 3.2) and which are measures resistant to outliers and which are not resistant to outliers.
Tuesday, 21 January 2010
We discussed graphing quantitative data. Specifically, how to group data measures into classes of equal size and constructing a histogram from the classes and the number of data in the classes (Section 2.2). Also, we sketched a boxplot, a.k.a., box-n-whiskers plot (Section 3.5) and how the five-number summary corresponds to the various parts of the boxplot. Lastly, we discussed how to describe the graphs: symmetric, skewed right, or skewed left (for both histograms and boxplots); number and location of peaks (histograms only); and possibilities of outliers in the data (histogram – we will see how to exactly determine outliers using boxplots next week).
Keep in mind we have mainly discussed some definitions and procedures. On Tuesday, we will start putting these ideas together and we will discuss why these ideas are important and why they are needed.
The first homework assignment is due on 1 February 2010. For homework, you should be able to complete the following so far:
Lastly, here are some of the TI83/84 instructions that we have already used in class:
- How to enter data into lists
- How to make a histogram
- How to find 5–number summary, variance and standard deviation
- How to make a boxplot
and some of the TI83/84 instructions that we will use in class next week:
