M358K Instructor Materials

Feel free to use any of these as is, or use parts and/or ideas for your own handouts. Most of these are pdf files, but I can provide .doc versions for most of them at your request.

Note: Since I am revising these materials as the occasion arises, I suggest reloading when you come back to this page, in order to get revised versions.

I. Materials for Instructors Using DeVeaux, Velleman, and Bock, Stats: Data and Models, 3rd ed.

Sample Syllabus

Tips for Minimizing Lecturing   New July 4, 2013

Notes on Textbook

Note: Web demos, etc. mentioned in the notes are linked from this page under the heading External Links, below.
General Notes on Textbook and Accompanying Disk    Addition to "General Comments on the Textbook" added Sun., Oct 14, 2012
Notes on Part I (See also Math Supplement on Normal Probability Plots, below)     Slightly revised Wed Aug 29, 2012
Notes on Part II (See also three supplements for Chapter 8, below)    Revised Sun. Oct. 14, 2012 (See especially end of Chapter 8)
Notes on Part III (See also supplements for Chapter 12 below)    Slightly revised Sun. Oct. 14, 2012
Notes for Part IV (See also supplements for Chapters 14 and 16 below)    Slightly revised Sun. Oct. 14, 2012
Notes on Part V (See also supplements for Chapters 18, 19 and 21 below)     Revised Th Aug. 23, 2012
Notes on Part VI (See also supplement for Chapter 23 and two supplements for Chapter 26 below) Posted Nov 2, 2012
Notes on Part VII (Chapter 27 only)
Review Exercises    Posted Nov. 20
Errata    Posted Nov. 20

Supplementary Materials

Caveat: Although I have proofread each of these at least once, there may still be some typos  or other glitches. Please let me know if you find any. Also contact me if you would like a .docx file to modify for use in your class.

Math Supplement on Normal Probability Plots (for pp. 129-130) Corrected Wed August 19, 2012

Supplementary Exercises for Chapter 8: Least Squares Equations and Related Identities

Supplement for Chapter 8: Why R2 is the Fraction of Variation Accounted for by Regression
    Note: This should be preceded by the Supplementary Exercises for Chapter 8.

Supplement for Chapter 8: Another "What Can Go Wrong" New Sun. Oct. 14, 2012

Materials Related to Projects
Materials for Instructors
Comments for Instructors on Projects and Project Handouts
Project Proposal Checklist (for grading project proposals)
Project Grading Checklist (for grading final project reports)
Sample Handouts for Students (pdf files; please contact me if you would like a .docx file to modify to suit your own needs.
Project Description
Project Proposal (used for both preliminary and final project proposal)
Project Report

String Sampling Class Activity (supplement to Chapter 12)
Instructor notes
Student handout

What Is Probability?  (supplement for Chapter 14)
    pdf  (suitable for slide-show for short lecture augmenting what's in textbook)

Random Variables (supplement for p. 382, Chapter 16)
    pdf (for use as handout, short lecture, examples, or ideas)

Where Does the 10% Condition Come From? (Supplement for Chapter 18)    pdf

An Example Where the Central Limit Fails (Optional supplement to Footnote 9, p. 440)    pdf

Why Does the Sample Variance Have n-1 in the Denominator? (Supplement for end of Chapter 18)    pdf

What is a Confidence Interval? (Handout to discuss in class at the end of Chapter 19)    pdf

What is a P-Value? (Handout to discuss in class at the end of Chapter 21) pdf

Chi-squared Distributions, t-Distributions, and Degrees of Freedom (Supplement for Chapter 23) pdf     New Sept. 24, 2012

Connection Between the One-Sample Test for Proportions and the Chi-Squared Goodness-of-Fit Test (Supplement for Chapter 26)  pdf  New Oct. 4, 2012

Connection Between the z-Test for Proportions and the Chi-Squared Test of Homogeneity (Supplement for Chapter 26) pdf New Oct. 8, 2012

Template and instructions for making a three-dimensional model similar to Figure 27.3. New Nov. 6, 2012

Optional Supplement for Chapter 27: Outlines of Proofs of Formulas on pp. 681-682.   New Nov. 12, 2012

Optional Supplement for Chapter 27: Properties of the Intercept     New Nov. 12, 2012 

Supplement for Chapter 27: More Regression Tests -- F-test and Test for Zero Population Correlation  Posted Nov. 19, 2012

External Links

These are links to websites mentioned in the Notes for Instructors (linked above). You may want to use some of them for in-class demonstrations of concepts. (I recommend trying them out before class to decide how best to use them.)

Histogram Applet (Chapter 4) Uses Old Faithful data to show how number of bins used in a histogram can give different impressions of the distribution.

Least Squares Demo (Chapter 8)

Data-Fitting Demo Using Least Squares and Least Absolute Value
(Chapter 9)  Useful for showing the effect of influential points and points with high leverage. Shows the line fit by the Least Absolute Value method as well as the least squares line. Choose "least square line" (at top), then use "Add points" (at the bottom) to put in some points; the least squares line for those points will be shown. Click "move point" at the bottom to be able to move a point and see how the least squares line changes. (Choosing the other top buttons will allow you to show the Least Absolute Value line, or both lines, and see how they behave differently in response to moving a point.)

Wording Questions (Chapter 12) More examples and references about wording questions for surveys. Might be useful for students who want to do a survey asking a question.

Bad Copy (Optional supplement for Chapters 13 and/or 18 and/or 20 -- 20 might be best; or for your own background) A recent article in Nature discussing how studies may give different results when replicated, and some related problems

(Chapter 17, p. 412) Several links showing the binomial distribution and normal approximation:

Rectangular Galton Board plus information

Triangular Galton Board

Quincunx with Variable Parameters

Sampling Distribution/Central Limit Simulations (Chapter 18))
Agresti Sampling Distributions demo
Several choices of population distribution (including "custom"). Shows sampling distributions for a couple of statistics. See instructions on website. Choosing binary and looking at the sampling distribution of count of 1's shows the binomial distribution as a sampling distribution.
Rice Virtual Lab in Statistics Sampling Distribution Demo
This allows you to create a distribution for Y and simulate the sampling distribution for the mean of Y with various sample sizes. It also shows summary statistics for the sampling distribution. To see cases where the convergence of the sampling distribution to normal is very slow, try the following:
1. A distribution with a full height spike at the left, a half height spike at the right, and nothing in between, with n = 25.
2.  A distribution with three equally spaced spikes, descending in height, with nothing in between.
Mary Parker's Simulations Shows distributions of sample means for samples of sizes 2, 4, 16, and 32 for a zoo of distributions, some ordinary and some exotic.

Log-Normal Distribution (possible supplement to Chapter 18 for interested students)

Agresti Confidence Intervals for a Proportion demo (Chapter 19)

Agresti "Significance Tests for a Proportion" web demo (Chapters 20 and 21)
See description and instructions on web site, as well as comments in Notes for Part V.

Possible supplemental reading for Chapter 20:
Breast Cancer Screening: Cons as Well as Pros and  A Closer Look at Prostate Cancer Screening

Confidence Intervals for the Mean web demos (Chapter 23)
Bioconsulting Confidence Interval Simulation

R. Webster's Confidence Interval Simulation


W. H Freeman's Confidence Interval Simulation


The Rice Virtual Lab in Statistics Confidence Interval Simulation


Severe Diet Doesn't Prolong Life, at Least in Monkeys NY Times science reporter Gina Kolata discusses recent research on the effect of diet restriction.  A nice supplement to the ActivStats activity “Compute a Confidence Interval for the Restricting Diet Data” for Chapter 24.

 Last updated July 4, 2013