Histogram from EcLS
> (use oldfaithful)
> (hist duration)

• Assignments
  Note that critical assignments are in a larger font, and very critical ones are indicated with asterisks.
  
  • 16 of Wall Street's Sharpest Minds Predict Where Stocks Are Headed in 2012 by Sam Ro, Business Insider, Dec. 27, 2011.
    What is a reasonable summary of these very diverse predictions for the S&P 500 stock index? The mean, median, range, IQR, SD.
    The stock prediction data here

  • Assigment I with R
    Due Friday, Jan 20, 2012. Download the R program (see R Quick Start for more info), generate some random numbers and write a report.

  • Read Data and Histograms, by Philip B. Stark, University of California at Berkeley. Distinguish the types of data; work with the business case study (WBH, WD) and on the gravity data; do the online problems on this.
    For use in R, the gravity data used by Stark is here . Once the data appears, highlight it all with CTRL-A, then paste it into the R command window.

  • * Drawing Histograms * by Prof. McGahagan. Also covers barplots and density plots.

  • * Measures of Location and Dispersion * by Prof. McGahagan. Basic overview (revised 2011 to use R)
  • * Mean, Median, and SD * by Prof. McGahagan More detailed presentation(2011, using R), with an optional appendix for the computer enthusiast.

  • Trimmed Mean PCE Inflation Rate from the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank. (PCE = Personal Consumption Expenditure See the Excel spreadsheet which gives the detail of the included and excluded components.

  • Probability Distributions

  • Chapter 3. Problems 4,5,8 of the Review Exercises should definitely be done for homework. You should also identify any difficulty you are having with the other problems, in this and later chapters.
  • Chapter 4. Review Exercises, Problems 2,3,5, 8, 9, 10.
  • Chapter 5. Review Exercises, Problems 4, 7.
  • Chapter 6. Special Review Exercises, Problems 3, 4, 6, 7, 9.
  • Look at the Suggested Exercises for Unit I , where you will find a list of critical terms, and a list of some very helpful problems from individual sections of the text.
  • I highly recommend working through the handouts from Michael Wichura, listed below under individual chapters.

• * Homework answers *

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• What do you want? INFORMATION!
  Trailer to "The Prisoner."

• Claude Shannon and Information Theory from David E. Luneberger, Information Science , Princeton University Press, 2006. Note that information is defined in terms of probability, not the other way around.

• Random number generation
  ".. too important to be left to chance"

• Berkeley Webcast of Ibser's webcourse. Lectures 2-6 cover the material in this unit.

• Chapter 3. Data and Histograms
  • Misleading Graphics
    Examples of misleading graphical presentations of information.

  • Data and Histograms, by Philip B. Stark, University of California at Berkeley.
  • The Histogram, Handout by Michael Wichura, University of Chicago.
  • Histograms, Notes by Rebecca Nugent, Carnegie Mellon.

  • Histogram assignment (helpful, but I won't collect or grade).
  • Survey of Consumer Finances The link is to Federal Reserve Bulletin, Feb. 2009.

  • * Review Exercises for Chapter 3 -- Solutions * , by Tom McGahagan.

• Chapter 4. Descriptive Statistics
  • Mean and Standard Deviation by Tom McGahagan.
  • Average/Median/Mode/Standard Deviation, Notes by Rebecca Nugent.
  • Measures of Location and Spread, by Philip B. Stark.
  • The Average and the Standard Deviation, Handout by Michael Wichura.
  • The Small Schools Myth by Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution . The article begins:
    "Did Bill Gates waste a billion dollars because he failed to understand theformula for the standard deviation of the mean?", and the answer is "Yes."
    The paper on The Promise and Pitfalls of Using Imprecise School Accountability Measures by Thomas J. Kane and Douglas O. Staiger is, as Tabarrok notes, an especially good treatment of the problem.

  • Platy- and Leptokurtosis is on p. 160 of "Student" (William Gosset), "Errors of Routine Analysis", Biometrika, vol. 19, no. 1/2 (July, 1927), pp. 151-64.

  • * Review Exercises for Chapter 4 -- Solutions * , by Tom McGahagan.

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  Normal Density Function
  > (normal-area -3 3)

  
• Chapter 5 The Normal Approximation for Data
  • The Normal Approximation for Data, by Michael Wichura.
  • Rebecca Nugent has several very thorough handouts on this material.
    • Standardizing Data
    • Areas Under the Normal Curve
    • Normal Percentiles (Quantiles)
  • Normal Approximation, by Ryan Admiraal.

    * Chebyshev's Inequality * How to find percentiles for any distribution whatsoever, without any tables at all.
    See Philip Stark, Measures of Location and Spread, last section for more examples and exercises.

  • * Review Exercises for Chapter 5 -- Solutions * , by Tom McGahagan.

• Chapter 6. Measurement Error
  • Measurement Error/Points-Lines, by Rebecca Nugent. Also includes a brief review of graphing points and lines (Chapter 7 of FPP). We won't cover chapter 7 in class, but you are expected to remember this material from basic algebra, and will be responsible for it on later exams.
  • Measurement Error, by Michael Wichura.

  • * Review Exercises for Chapter 6 -- Solutions * , by Tom McGahagan. Includes selected Special Review Exercises.