MATH 3342 (Trindade) -- Mathematical Statistics for Engineers & Scientists -- fall 2022

Basic Information

• Course instructor: Dr. Alex Trindade, 228 Mathematics & Statistics Building.
  E-mail: alex.trindade "at" ttu.edu; Phone: 834-6164.
  Office Hours: TWR 1:00-2:00 physically or on zoom (Passcode=132097), or by appointment.
  Emergency Substitute: ???.

Text Books

• Required: Probability and Statistics for Engineering and the Sciences (7th - 9th ed.), by Jay L. Devore, Thomson Brooks/Cole.
• Recommended: Student Solution Manual. Contains detailed solutions to odd problems.

Lecture Notes

Course Objectives and Syllabus

• Chapter 1 (1.1-1.4): Descriptive statistics (5 days).
• Chapter 2 (2.1-2.5): Probability (5 days).
• Chapter 3 (3.1-3.6): Discrete random variables and probability distributions (6 days).
• Chapter 4 (4.1-4.6): Continuous random variables and probability distributions (6 days).
• Chapter 5 (5.3-5.5): Sampling distributions and Central Limit Theorem (2 days).
• Chapter 6 (6.1): Point estimation (1 day).
• Chapter 7 (7.1-7.3): One-sample confidence intervals for means and proportions (5 days).
• Chapter 8 (8.1-8.5): One-sample hypothesis tests for means and proportions (5 days).
• Chapter 9 (9.1-9.4): Two-sample inference for means and proportions (4 days).

Expected Student Learning Outcomes

• Understand the need to be wary of statistical claims, common pitfalls in sampling, and misrepresentation of conclusions.
• Understand the meanings of various statistical measures, including the mean, median, mode, standard deviation, variance, and quartiles.
• Become familiar with various graphical representations of data and learn to recognize misleading graphs.
• Develop proficiency in real-world probability problems.
• Understand the concept of a probability distribution and real-world problems involving various distributions, including binomial, normal, hypergeometric, and Poisson distributions.
• Understand and apply the Central Limit Theorem.
• Compute and interpret confidence intervals.
• Conduct and interpret hypothesis tests.

Methods of Assessing the Expected Learning Outcomes

• A: 90-100%.
• B: 80-89%.
• C: 70-79%.
• D: 60-69%.
• F: 0-59%.

• Test 1: After completion of Chapters 1 & 2 (Sep 22). (Based on Hwks 1 & 2.)
• Test 2: After completion of Chapters 3 & 4 (Oct 20). (Based on Hwks 3 & 4.)
• Test 3: After completion of Chapters 5, 6 & 7 (Nov 17). (Based on Hwks 5-6 & 7.)
• Final Exam: 1:30 - 4:00 pm Saturday Dec 10.

Homework Problem Sets

• Be sure to click on "Save Answer" each time you complete a Question. You can then log out and return later to continue the Assignment. Click on "Submit Answer" only when you finish the whole Question, which will then be graded. You can also choose to "Save Assignment" and "Submit Assignment" at the bottom.
• Some questions are open-ended and ask you to write/draw something. These cannot be checked very carefully by the automatic grading system, and thus almost anything you write/draw will be acceptable. BUT, you should make an honest attempt at these questions, since you will see them again in the tests which are graded by me!
• Some questions are very specific in asking for the answer correct to a certain number of decimal places. Be sure not to round intermediate answers; round only when you get to the final answer.
• Some questions are somewhere in between these two extremes. For example, the calculation of a p-value is very precise, but the system should flag as being correct any answer that you correctly interpolate with tables. For instance, if the exact p-value is 0.078, but you can only deduce from the tables that it falls somewhere between 0.05 and 0.10, then any value in this range should be marked as correct.
• Unless otherwise specified, give answers correct to 4 decimal places. This should be a sufficient default accuracy for all questions.
• You may submit each Question Part, a maximum of 3 times. The highest score of these 3 submissions will be recorded. (Alternatively, you can also submit each entire Question, or entire Assignment 3 times.) The system may give you helpful hints/links for incorrect questions, in order to help you get it right on the next submission.
• Most questions are randomized per student, so as to dissuade you from simply inputting what you friend did.
• The Communications tool is disabled, so do not attempt to communicate with me through the system.
• You are advised to complete each Homework assignment within a week after we finish the corresponding chapter in class. Each Homework # corresponds exactly to the Chapter #.
• Some questions may require considerable effort on your part, but this is an important part of the learning process. It is important to keep up with the pace of the course, which on average will require you to complete a homework assignment about every other week.

Instructions on Accessing WebAssign

• Class Key: TTU34694671.
• It is very important that you provide a genuine e-mail address, such as your @ttu.edu, upon registering (otherwise username & password retrieval will be impossible).

Policies

• What to do in case of an emergency. If a student encounters a personal problem that affects their ability to attend class or complete their work on time, they should immediately contact the Dean of Students office via phone (806-742-2984) or email (deanofstudents@ttu.edu). The Dean of Students can help with emergencies including COVID, car accidents, death of a family member, inability to afford food, health issues, and more. In exceptional circumstances, the Dean of Students can authorize exceptions to class policies. That's why it is critically important to immediately inform both your teacher and the Dean of Students office of any emergency. In addition, Title IX reporting and support resources are available here.
• Class Attendance. Your attendance alone will not impact your grade, but missing exams and assignments will.
  • Make-up Exams: These may be granted in exceptional circumstances after you have followed the above protocol on What to do in case of emergency.
  • Absence for observance of a religious holy day: See this link.
  • Absence due to officially approved trips: The Texas Tech University Catalog states that the department chairpersons, directors, or others responsible for a student representing the university on officially approved trips should notify the student's instructors of the departure and return schedules in advance of the trip. The instructor so notified must not penalize the student, although the student is responsible for material missed. Students absent because of university business must be given the same privileges as other students.
• ADA accommodations, Academic Integrity, COVID-19. See this link.
• Civility in the Classroom. It is expected that everyone will behave in a manner that is conducive to learning. One common disruption is cell phones. Please turn these off in class.
• Electronic Devices in Tests. Scientific calculators are capable of performing many of the long and laborious calculations for almost all of the course. These are permitted, and are in fact necessary. However, you should not rely on your calculator to automatically "spit-out" answers to the more complex questions. The reason for this is that many substantive statistical procedures have slight variations, and tend to be course-specific. So, although your calculator may be able to calculate the quartiles (fourths) of a sample of data for you, its method may not exactly agree with the one in the book. Greater deviations may occur in confidence intervals and hypothesis tests. Also, some questions on tests may be of a partial-credit type nature, and hence require you to show the steps in obtaining the answer. If you simply write the final answer, you may only get a small proportion of the points, even if your answer is correct. In the spirit of keeping costs down, I will permit the usage of apps on smart devices (phones, tablets, laptops, etc.), but any kind of communication or accessing of the web via these devices is forbidden.
• Collaboration. My policies on this are as follows.
  • Homeworks: Discussion with peers regarding material/concepts covered in the course is permitted, and is encouraged since it usually leads to greater comprehension. However, each person must write up his/her own solution to a particular problem, and not simply have someone else do it for them.
  • Tests: Any form of collaboration on tests, including e-device communication or trying to see what the person next to you is writing, is strictly forbidden and will not be tolerated.

Statistical Computing