Here’s a study guide for the first midterm, in Word and PDF formats. You’ll find your questions about calculators and note cards answered at the top of the study guide.

Please let me know if you have any questions about the study guide or the midterm.

Image: “tyro to the new world,” Howie Le, Flickr (CC)

There’s an interesting opinion piece in this week’s Hustler by Akshitkumar Mistry, a fourth-year Vanderbilt medical student. “Weed out weed-out courses” argues that intro courses in the sciences, engineering, and mathematics are preventing too many students from succeeding in those fields. Mistry writes:

Research has consistently demonstrated that students grasp concepts better with active learning rather than passively hearing a lecture for an hour, and then watching some graduate student solve practice problems that they couldn’t. STEM fields in reality are all about application in the real world with visual, experiential, hands-on problem solving.

That’s a pretty good summary of why I’ve designed this course the way I have.

Image: “Untitled,” efwp, Flickr (CC)

Here’s a breakdown of how your grade in this course will be determined.

• 20% – Midterm 1
• 20% – Midterm 2
• 25% – Final Exam
• 15% – Problem Sets
• 10% – Application Project
• 10% – Class Participation

The first three are straightforward tests, each with a mix of multiple-choice and free-response questions. For the problem sets, I’ll drop your lowest individual problem set grade and average the rest for your problem set score. The application project comes in two parts: the proposal, which contributes 30% of your application project score, and the project itself, which contributes the other 70%.

Class participation is a bit more complicated, but I’ve come up with a scheme that should provide sufficient motivation for you to participate in activities that will help you learn while also giving you some flexibility as to how you participate in the course.  See below.

Your numerical score for the course will be converted to a letter grade according to the following scale:

Your class participation score has three parts:

• Clicker Questions – Each day we use clickers, you’ll get a score based on the percentage of the questions you answer (right or wrong). So if we have four clicker questions on a given day and you answer three of them (maybe because you’re late to class and miss one), you’ll get a 75 for that day. I’ll average these daily scores for your overall clicker question score.
• Pre-Class Reading Quizzes – Similarly, you’ll get a score for each reading quiz based on the percentage of questions you answer (right or wrong). As long as it looks like you put some effort into your answers, you’ll get full credit. I’ll average these individual quiz scores for your overall PCRQ score.
• Social Bookmarking – You’ll have a number of small assignments to complete on Diigo or Pinterest this semester. Your overall social bookmarking score will be the percentage of these assignments that you complete.

I’ll take all three of these scores (each out of a 100), add them together, divide by 240, and cap the result at 100.  That will be your class participation score, which contributes 10% of your final course grade. That means you can get a perfect class participation score without completing all three of these activities perfectly. You can, for instance, complete 80% of the clicker questions, reading quizzes, and bookmarking assignments and still get a 100 for your class participation score. Or you could answer all the clicker questions and complete all the bookmarking activities, but only finish 40% of the reading quizzes–and still get a 100 for your class participation score.

It sounds a little complicated, but if you jump in and participate, I think you’ll find you’ll get all the points you need.

Image: “Monroe Calculator,” Derek Bruff, Flickr (CC)

The statistics ideas and techniques you are studying this semester have applications in a variety of fields.  Learning about the ways in which mathematical ideas are applied to problems from other disciplines is one of the goals of this course.  To that end, you will be required to complete a two-part application project during the semester. Your application project should demonstrate your understanding of a particular data-centric problem from the engineering sciences (or other discipline), data visualization tools useful for exploring that problem, the statistical concepts and techniques that can be used to solve the problem, and the ways in which mathematical modes of thought are brought to bear on the problem.

Please note that you must work in teams of three on these projects.  You are responsible for sharing the workload with your teammates fairly.  I have three reasons for this policy: (1) the quality of your work will likely be greater than it be if you worked alone, (2) developing collaboration skills is a valuable learning goal, and (3) having a reasonably number of projects to grade (and provide feedback on) makes it feasible for me to implement this very important assignment in this course.

Part One

For the first part of your application project, your team will describe a particular problem from the engineering sciences or other discipline that can be addressed through the use of the primary statistical techniques we are studying this semester—namely, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, and linear regression.  Your team should not attempt to use these techniques to actually solve the problem you describe in this part of the project.  However, you should pose one or more interesting questions relevant to your problem and make the case that these techniques could help someone answer those questions.  You should include any data relevant to the problem you choose—or instructions for how someone could obtain such data.

This first part of your project will take the form of a 500-to-700-word post here on the course blog. I’ll upgrade one member of each team to “contributor” status here on the blog so that s/he can post your work. Although I’ll be the one grading your project proposal, it will be available here on the blog for everyone to read, so write accordingly. In particular, I expect you to use APA Style for your citations and references.

You will be graded on the extent to which the problem you describe is a reasonable application of the statistical techniques covered in this course, as well as on the clarity of your writing.  Grammar and presentation will be factored into your grade to a lesser extent.  This first part of your project will count for 30% of your overall project grade.

Part Two

For the second part of your application project, your team will implement the project you proposed in part one. If you proposed a project that isn’t actually feasible, then you may, with my permission, implement one of the projects proposed by the other teams.

You will be graded not only on the content of your project (the questions you address, the methods you use, the assumptions you make), but also on the clarity of your explanations.  Grammar and presentation will be factored into your grade to a lesser extent.  The second part of your project will count for 70% of your overall project grade.

More information about the application project, including specific requirements and format information for part two, will be provided later in the semester.

Image: Testability Bubble Chart, JAWspeak, Flickr (CC)