Here’s your next reading assignment. Read Sections 3.2 and 3.4 in your textbook and answer the following questions by 8 a.m., Monday, February 13th. Be sure to login (using the link near the bottom of the sidebar) to the blog before leaving your answers in the comment section below.

1. Consider the normal probability plot seen below. Looking at the plot, would you say that the data come from a normally distributed population? If not, how would the histogram for these data vary from that of a normal histogram?  (You can click on the image below to see a larger version.)
2. Consider the following experiment: On a Friday night, a highway patrol officer sets up a roadblock and stops 100 drivers. A given driver is considered a success if he or she is wearing a seat belt; the driver is considered a failure otherwise. Can we consider this experiment a binomial experiment? Why or why not?
3. What’s one question you have about the reading?

Here’s your next reading assignment. Read Sections 3.1 (and 2.5, if you haven’t already) in your textbook and answer the following questions by 8 a.m., Wednesday, February 8th. Be sure to login to the blog before leaving your answers in the comment section below.

1. In the normal probability table at the back of your book (pages 362-363), the value 0.0618 appears at the intersection of the row labeled -1.5 and the column labeled 0.04. In your own words, describe the meaning of this entry in the table.
2. Consider the random variable X = the weight in pounds of a randomly selected newborn baby born in the United States during 2011. Suppose that X can be modeled with a normal distribution with mean 7.57 and standard deviation 1.06.  What is the probability that the birth weight of a randomly selected baby exceeds 9 pounds?
3. For the random variable in question 2, if the standard deviation were 1.26 instead, how would that change the shape of the graph of the probability distribution function of X?
4. What’s one question you have about the reading?

Here’s your next reading assignment. Read Sections 2.3.7 and 2.4 in your textbook and answer the following questions by 8 a.m., Friday, February 3rd. Be sure to login to the blog before leaving your answers in the comment section below.

1. Given what you know about conditional probability, what do you make of this statement? “For life to occur on Earth as we know it, the Earth’s temperature had to be just right. Since the odds of an Earth-life planet orbiting a Sun-like star at just the right distance to produce Earth-like temperatures are astronomical, the presence of life on Earth is somehow special.”
2. What’s one question you have about the reading?

Here’s your next reading assignment. Read Section 2.3 (omitting 2.3.7 for now) in your textbook and answer the following questions by 8 a.m., Wednesday, February 1st. Be sure to login to the blog before leaving your answers in the comment section below.

1. Suppose you select a random member of the Vanderbilt class of 2011. Let A be the event that the student was an engineering major, and let B be the event that the student took calculus while in college. Which is greater, P(A | B) or P(B | A)? Why?
2. Suppose a factory has two production lines, A and B. Line A produces 40% of the factory’s output, and Line B produces the rest. Of the parts made on Line A, 4% are defective. Of the parts made on Line B, 3% are defective. Suppose a part is picked at random from inventory and found to be defective. What’s the probability it came from line A?
3. Suppose you draw a card from a standard 52-card deck at random, then draw a second card at random from the remaining 51 cards. Use the General Multiplication Rule to find the probability that both cards are hearts.
4. What’s one question you have about the reading?

Here’s your next reading assignment. Read Sections 2.1-2.2 in your textbook and answer the following questions by 8 a.m., Monday, January 30th. Be sure to login login to the blog before leaving your answers in the comment section below.

1. Suppose that you select a Vanderbilt undergraduate student at random. Let A be the event that the student is a junior. Let B be the event that the student is an engineering major. Describe the event A^C & B.
2. Suppose the personnel manager of a manufacturing plant claims that among the 400 employees, 312 got a raise in 2008, 248 got increased benefits, 173 got both, and 43 got neither. Is this claim accurate? Why or why not?
3. Suppose A is the event that it rains today and B is the event that I brought my umbrella into work today. What is wrong with the following argument? “These events are independent because bringing an umbrella to work doesn’t effect whether or not it rains today.”
4. What’s one question you have about the reading?

Here’s your next reading assignment. Read Sections 1.5-1.7 (omitting Section 1.6.2) in your textbook and answer the following questions by 8 a.m., Wednesday, January 25th. Be sure to login to the blog before leaving your answers in the comment section below.

1. These charts from Businessweek make the point that correlation does not imply causation. Identify a possible lurking variable for one of the charts.
2. Let’s say I wanted to compare the effects of teaching calculus in two different ways–with clickers and without. Why would it be difficult to conduct a randomized experiment to compare these methods here at Vanderbilt?
3. What’s one question you have about the reading?

In this course, you’ll learn to use the free, open-source statistical software R. Using R directly requires a bit of programming, so we’ll take advantage of the free, open-source program R Studio, which provides a convenient interface to R.

Here’s what you need to do by 8 a.m., Friday, January 20th Monday, January 23rd:

• Download and install R.
• Download and install R Studio.
• Read the first five pages of this introduction to R from our textbook authors. Try out the software as suggested in this introduction.
• Answer the reading questions below. (Be sure to login to the blog before leaving your answers in the comment section below.)
• Bring your laptop to class on Friday, if practical. (If you don’t bring one, you can work with a partner who did.)

Here are your reading questions, which you should be able to answer whether or not you successfully install and run these programs:

1. What purpose does the $ in the command “arbuthnot$boys” serve?
2. Describe in words the result of the command “arbuthnot$boys/(arbuthnot$boys+arbuthnot$girls)”.
3. At this point, what do you find most confusing about using R and R Studio?

Here’s your first reading assignment. Read Sections 1.1 through 1.3 (omitting Section 1.3.7) in your textbook and answer the following questions by 8 a.m., Friday, January 13th. To answer the questions, login to the blog and leave your answers in a comment. Your comment will only be visible to you, me, and the TAs.

1. What is the relationship between $$\overline{x}$$ and $$\mu$$?
2. Is the given variable discrete or continuous? (a) The number of heads in 100 tosses of a coin. (b) The length of a rod randomly chosen from a day’s production. (c) The age of a randomly chosen Vanderbilt student.
3. When constructing a histogram, why is the choice of bin size (that is, the size of the range of values that are placed in a single bin) important?
4.  What’s one question you have about the reading?

Update: I just (Thursday at midnight) changed a setting in the “Semi-Private Comments” plugin. The comments section of this post should now work as follows: If you’re logged into the blog and leave a comment, that comment will only be visible to you (anytime you’re logged in) and me (since I’m the admin here). If it doesn’t seem to work that way for you, let me know via email.

Second Update: If you have to give your name and email when trying to leave a comment, then you’re not logged in.