Muscatine Community College

Fall 2005

Fundamentals of Statistics

MATH 215

Loper 215 Wednesday 6:00-9:15p.m.

Instructor:

John Dabeet

Telephone:

Office: (563) 288-6064

Home: (563) 263-8145

Office E-mail: jdabeet@eicc.edu

Home E-mail: ampal@muscanet.com

Office Hours:

Wednesday

5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.

Room: Gaekle 205

Textbook:

Brase / Brase, Understanding Basic Statistics, Third Edition, Houghton Mifflin, 2004

Course Contents:

We will cover most of chapters one (1) – eleven (11).

Course Objectives:

To identify the nature of statistics, its objective, and how it plays an important role in the sciences, in industry, in business and economics, and ultimately, in our daily lives.
To provide students with more methods for describing data.
To develop an understanding of the basic concepts of probability.
To distinguish between the two types of random variables and to explain how to find the probability that a random variable will assume specific values.
To explain why the normal random variable occurs so frequently in practice.
To present the important concepts of simple random sampling and sampling distributions.
To distinguish between point estimates and interval estimates of parameters and to construct a confidence interval.
To present the basic concepts of hypothesis testing and to distinguish between two types of error involved in the testing procedure.

Homework:

Appropriate problem assignments on current material will be given at the lecture. Ideally, these assignments should be completed before the next lecture.

Quizzes:

Approximately five (5) unannounced ten (10) minute quizzes will be given during the course of the semester. The lowest grade will be dropped. There will be NO make-up quizzes.

Tests:

There will be three (3) in-class tests and one (1) final exam.

First Test	Wednesday, September 21, 05
Second Test	Wednesday, October 19, 05
Third Test	Wednesday, November 16, 05
Final Exam	Will be announced later

Grades:

Course grades will be based on a total of 600 points as follows:

Assignments	100 points
Quizzes	100 points
First Test	100 points
Second Test	100 points
Third Test	100 points
Final Test	100 points

Curve will be used for student’s final grades.

Attendance:

Constant attendance is essential to keep up in the course. Students are responsible for all work covered in class, including all assignments, even if absent from class. Hour exams MUST be taken at the announced time; makeup exams will be given only in the case of severe illness.

Expectations of the Student:

	Class Attendance. You are expected to attend every class meeting. Attendance will be taken. You can be excused from attendance if you inform me about it before class.
	Reading. You should carefully read all assigned texts.
	Class Participation. Class participation means both contributing to the class’s understanding of the readings and issues and bringing to discussions your own critical perspective.

Plagiarism or cheating of any kind will result in a final grade of “F” for the course.

Topical Outline

Topics Chapter

Getting Started 1

Organizing Data 2

Averages and Variation 3

Regression and Correlation 4

Elementary probability Theory 5

The Binomial Probability Distribution 6

Normal Distributions 7

Introduction to Sampling Distributions 8

Introduction to Estimation 9

Hypothesis Testing Involving One Population 10

Inferences About Differences 11

HAVE A NICE SEMESTER