STAT 515, Statistical Methods I -- Spring 2005

Instructor:
David Hitchcock, assistant professor of statistics
209D LeConte College
Phone: 777-5346
Email: hitchcock@stat.sc.edu
Course Web Page:  http://www.stat.sc.edu/~hitchcock/stat515.html

Classes:
Section 001 Meeting Times: 	
Tues./Thurs. 11:00AM-12:15PM, LeConte College, Room 113

Office Hours:
Mon 12:15PM-1:15 PM, Tues 10:00AM-10:50AM, Wed 2:30PM-3:30PM, Thu 10:00AM-10:50AM. 
  Please feel free to make appointments to see me at other times.

Textbooks:
Statistics (9th Edition), by J.T.McClave and T. Sincich, Prentice Hall, 2003.

Prerequisite: A grade of C or higher in MATH 111 or equivalent; or a grade of C or 
higher in STAT 201 or equivalent.

Course Outline: Chapters 1 – 11 and 13 of the McClave & Sincich textbook.  Topics 
covered include:  descriptive statistics, elementary probability, sampling 
distributions, estimation, hypothesis testing, simple linear regression, and 
contingency tables. 

Homework:
Homework exercises from the textbook are assigned on the course web page. Due 
dates are given on the course web page. Late homework will be penalized. 

You may help each other with homework problems, but each student's homework must 
be written up independently.  If homework is found to have been copied, all 
students involved will receive a 0.

Everyone is expected to do every problem.  Please write up homework papers neatly 
and clearly.  Many problems on the exams will be similar to homework problems.


Exams:
There will be three in-class midterm exams (February 10, March 17, April 19) and a 
final exam on May 3.  Exams may not normally be made up, except in extreme 
circumstances, for which written documentation of excuse (doctor's note, funeral 
notice, etc.) is required.  If you suspect you may miss an exam day, it is 
important to contact me well in advance of the test date.

Project:
There will also be a project involving collecting and analyzing a data set using 
the techniques learned in the course. The details of the project will be handed 
out in class on February 17.  You are encouraged to work in teams of up to three 
people per team on the projects.

Grading:
The course grade will be based on homework (12%), project grade (8%), 3 midterm 
exams (20% each), and a final exam (20%).  A course average of 90-100 will result 
in an A, 87-89 a B+, 80-86 a B, etc.

Computing:
Some problems in this course involve significant computations, and for these, we 
will learn to use the software package SAS. You will have an account on the CSM 
Windows-NT domain. Currently the computers in LC 124, LC 303A and PSC 102 have 
SAS. Student copies of SAS for home use are also available for purchase from the 
bookstore. 

It is not assumed that you have any previous experience with SAS.  In many 
industries and jobs, SAS is the standard statistical computing package used, and 
this course will introduce you to some of the most common SAS procedures. 

A free web resource that may be useful for computations is DoStat 
(www.dostat.com), which will be discussed in class.

Tentative Course Schedule: Tuesdays and Thursdays, January 10 through April 25, except:
No class (Spring Break): March 8,10 (Tuesday, Thursday)


January 27: Homework 1 due 
February 3: Homework 2 due
February 10: Midterm exam 1  
February 22: Homework 3 due
March 3: Homework 4 due
March 17: Midterm exam 2 
March 31: Homework 5 due 
April 14: Homework 6 due 
April 19: Midterm exam 3
Tuesday, May 3: (9:00 a.m.) final exam