Phone: (416)-736-5250

Taught by: Professor Gene Denzel

Office: N615 Ross

Office Hours: M,W 9-10 and 3:30-4:30, or by appointment

Web page: http://www.yorku.ca/lezned

Textbook: Introduction to the Practice of Statistics, by Moore & McCabe (THIRD edition)

General outline: The course will deal with learning what statistics is, and how to look at the world as statisticians do. The material covered will be drawn from chapters 5 through 10, plus chapter 12, of the textbook. As time permits at the end of the course, we will also do some topics from chapter 11.

Many of the assignments will involve the analysis of sets of data which will require the use of a computer to do the necessary arithmetic or graphing. The recommended program for students in this course is Minitab, which is available on the central York academic computing system, called phoenix. Students should go to the Steacie Science Library Computing Help Desk for instructions on how to obtain an account. For those with access to a home computer and modem, it would probably be desirable to also acquire an account for York's high-speed modem pool. There is a small monthly charge to your STARS account for months in which the modem pool is used.

There is also a Minitab Manual which accompanies the text, which you can purchase if you wish. Many students find its examples helpful. Exams and quizzes will assume the ability to interpret output from various routines in Minitab, but will not require you to write programs or give commands.

In addition to the use of the computer to do your calculations, there is a wealth of information available through the world-wide web. For starters, the course web pages will have links to useful information and sites which will assist you in learning statistics. They will also provide the details of assignments, hints, solutions, etc. This information will often be available only on the web.

It is essential to understand that one learns statistics by doing, not by just reading. In order to be successful in this course it will be necessary to keep up with assignments on a weekly basis. To that end, there will be 5 short quizzes given during the term, based on recent assignments.

Grading: The grading in the course will be based on the following breakdown.

Final exam 50%

Quizzes: 15% (best 4 of 5 20-minute quizzes)

Assignments: 10%

Mid-term: 25%

The letter grade in the course will be based on the combination of the above grades, converted to a letter in rough correspondence to the common York mapping, but the exact break points will be determined by looking at components of the grade for those near the borderlines. Thus, a combined mark of 70.0 will not necessarily result in a grade of B, nor will a mark of 69.9 necessarily result in a C+.