Required texts.
Gravetter, F. J., Wallnau, L. B. (1996). Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences: A First Course for Students of Psychology and Education, 5th Edition. New York: West Publishing.
Contact information. | |
| Instructor: | Dr. J. Cooper Cutting |
| Phone: | 438-2999 |
| Office: | DeGarmo 421 |
| e-mail: | jccutti@ilstu.edu |
| Office hours: | Tu 10-11, Fr 2-3 & by appointment |
Goals & Objectives. This is a day and age of information. The endeavor of statistics is to help interpret the mass amounts of data that we must deal with. This course is an introduction into the basics of statistical methods. The objective is that a student who finishes the course will have a basic understanding of the statistics used in the behavioral sciences. My
Evaluation (grading). Each student will be evaluated based on their performance on 3 exams, 1 final exam, homework, and quizzes. The breakdown is presented below.
| final exam | 150 |
| exams | 100 each (300) |
| homeworks | 15 each (180) |
| 12 on-line quizzes | 10 each (120) |
| total | 750 pts |
Homework will typically be due every Tuesday at the beginning of class. If you are going to miss class that day, either have somebody turn your homework in for you, or turn it into me early. To turn it in early, please bring it to the main office (DeGarmo 435) and ask that it be placed in the instructor’s mail box. One final point about homework, it must be neat. If the homework cannot be read, then it cannot be graded, and no credit will be given. So make sure that your work is neat and legible. Quizzes are generally due Monday nights at midnight.
Additionally, students may gain an additional 30 pts of extra credit through participation as research participants. Students sign up on sheets in the basement of DeGarmo Hall. Students are expected to respect the sign-up process (that is sign up only once for a particular experiment, and once signed up, to attend and complete their appointment). For each hour of participation a student will get 6 points (so to get the maximum amount of extra credit, students must participate in 5 hours of experiments). At the experiment students will be given a ‘blue card’ that documents their participation. To get the extra credit, these blue cards must be turned into the instructor no later than November 30th. No blue cards will be accepted in December.
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Required texts.Gravetter, F. J., Wallnau, L. B. (1996). Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences: A First Course for Students of Psychology and Education, 5th Edition. New York: West Publishing. |
Some ground rules.
If you are going to miss a quiz or an exam it is critically important that you notify me AS SOON AS YOU KNOW that you’ll be absent and WHY. Call, e-mail, or talk to me in person. Make-ups are very rarely given without prior notification of an absences. Opportunity to make-up the missed work requires prior notification of the absence and an excused absence (that is one that you instructor accepts as reasonable and legitimate). How and when the work will be made up will be determined by the instructor.
You are expected to do your own work. Plagiarism and cheating of any sort will not be tolerated. Either behavior will result in a grade of ‘F’. Note that cheating includes copying another student’s homework. Making up false excuses for absences will also be considered cheating and may result in a grade of ‘F’ for missed work.
And finally, if you have any questions regarding anything in the syllabus and or the course in general, please feel free to ask. Talk to me in class, via phone, or e-mail. Don’t just assume that you know (or should know) the answer, I may not have been clear enough or may have forgotten to mention something.
Section Topic Calendars
Note: This topic calendar is an approximation and is meant to allow for some flexibility over the course of the semester.
|
Date |
Tentative topic calendar |
Readings & Homework |
|
WK1 (Aug 22,24) |
Introductions |
Chpt 1: 2,7,8,19,25,26 |
|
WK2 (Aug 29,31) |
Central Tendency |
Chpt 2: 6,9,24,26 Chpt 3: 4,5,9,11,17 |
|
WK3 (Sept 5, 7) |
Variability |
Chpt 4: 2,3,6,10,15,17,25 |
|
WK4 (Sept 12,14) |
Z-scores: Location of Scores |
Chpt 5: 1,2,5,25,31 |
|
WK5 (Sept 19,21) |
Introduction to Probability |
Chpt 6: 1,5,7,11,17,23 |
|
WK6 (Sept 26,28) |
Catch-up & review Sept 28 - Exam Chpts 1-6 |
|
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WK7 (Oct 3,5) |
Probability, Samples, & the Distribution of Sample Means |
Chpt 7: 8,9,11,16,18,24,26 |
|
WK8 (Oct 10,12) |
Prob & Dist of Means cont. Intro to Hypothesis Testing |
Chpt 8: 3,5,8,14,18 |
|
WK9 (Oct 17,19) |
Introduction to the t-statistic Hypothesis testing w/ 2 indepedent samples |
Chpt 9: 3,8,15,17,23 Chpt 10: 9,11,14,15 |
|
WK10 (Oct 24,26) |
Hypothisis testing w/ 2 related samples Estimation |
Chpt 11: 1,4,7,9,14 Chpt 12: 3,5,9,12,15 |
|
WK11 (Oct 31,Nov 2) |
More on Estimation Catch-up and review |
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WK12 (Nov 7,9) |
Nov 9 - Exam Chpts 7-12 Introduction to ANOVA |
Chpt 13: 6,10,11,16,19,20,23 |
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WK13 (Nov 14,16) |
ANOVA cont. ANOVA cont. |
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WK14 (Nov 21)No Class Thurs, Nov 23 |
Correlations and Regression Correlations & Regression cont |
Chpt 16: 6,8,9,10,13,28,32 |
|
WK15 (Nov 28,30) |
Catch-up and review Catch-up and review |
|
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WK16 (Dec 5,7) |
Dec 7 - Exam Chpts 13 & 16 Review for the Final Exam |
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Finals Week Section 02 (TTh 12:35) Section 03 (TTh 2:00) |
FINAL EXAM Wed. Dec. 13 @ 3:10 PM Thurs. Dec. 14 @ 3:10 PM |