Assignment for Monday, January 23:
Corrected 9:25 a.m., Monday, January 23; correction show in red.
Reminder: Students
whose last names begin with M through Z will be called
on Monday, so they should be sure to write out their answers to
questions to use when called on or to put on the doc cam if asked, and
be prepared to demonstrate the Applets involved in the assignment if
asked. Students whose last names begin with A through L will be called
on Wednesday.
I. Read Section 1.2 (pp. 40 - 56), paying attention to the following:
- Remember (in this and all reading assignments) to read slowly, for
comprehension; to heed
the “caution” symbol whenever it appears in the margin; and to pay
careful attention to definitions of words in boldface, being careful
not to confuse the technical meanings given here and other meanings the
same words might have in other contexts.
- There are many variations on boxplots; just two (p. 46 and
p. 48) are given here. Different sofware may use slightly different
versions. I'll probably show you some more variations in class.
- Note in the 1.5 x IQR rule (p. 48) that this rule just describes suspected outliers.
There is no hard and fast rule for deciding exactly when something is
or is not an outlier; whether or not to call something an outlier
depends on the context and is a matter of good judgment. This point will appear in some of the exercises.
- Note carefully that the denominator in the definition of
variance (p. 49) is n n-1, not n-1 n. The definition from probability would
have n, not n-1 in the denominator. The definition given here is called
sample variance and is used for samples. The definition from probability would be called population variance if the data points were the entire population. We will discuss the reason for the n-1 more in class.
II. Do the following exercises to reinforce the reading and for
possible class discussion: 1.41 - 1.43, 1.51, 1.55 - 1.57, 1.65 -
1.68, 1.76. (Note: Exercises 1.55 - 1.57 require one of the applets from the book CD or website)
Note: It would be a good idea to work ahead on the written assignment to be handed in Wednesday.