Statistics 401 Section 1

Comments on Exam 2:

The exam will be during class on November 3, and will include the material corresponding to Chapters 10--15, 18--20, and a little of 21 of the text. No books are allowed, but you may bring in a single double-sided page of notes. A normal table will be provided. You will need a calculator, but no credit will be given for problems involving calculation if you do not show intermediate results.

Part of the class on October 30 will be devoted to answering questions relating to the material for the exam. Here is a list of review problems.

• Part III Review (pp 262--267): 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33, 35, 37, 39ab;
• Part IV Review (pp 329--334): 1, 7, 9ab, 11, 17, 21a, 25, 29, 31, 35, 37
• Part V Review (pp 424--428) 1, 3, 5, 9, 13, 21, 24, 27

I don't necessarily expect you to do all of these problems (although that might be a good idea) but if you expect to do well on the exam you should be able to do all of these problems. I will be holding additional office hours before the exam; they will be posted on my office hours page.

As to the specifics of the material:

• When re-expression is appropriate, and the re-expression ladder
• Use of a simulation
• Sample surveys
• Simple random samples and other sampling designs
• Concepts such as population, parameter, sample, statistic
• Biases in sampling, and mistakes in sampling
• Vocabulary such as observational study, retrospective study, and prospective study
• The distinctive features of an experiment, the principles of experimental design, and the advantages of an experiment
• Concepts such as factors, treatments, controls, blinding, placebos, and blocking
• Vocabulary such as trial, outcome, event, mutually exclusive, and independent
• The rules of formal probability, including the basic properties and the complement, addition, and multiplication rules
• The idea of the law of large numbers
• Independence, dependence and conditional probability
• The concept of sampling distribution, its mean and standard deviation
• The use of the Central Limit Theorem for means and proportions
• Standard errors
• How to construct a 90, 95, or 99% confidence interval for a proportion
• Margin of error
• The correct interpretation of a 95% confidence interval
• Hypothesis testing vocabulary such as null hypothesis, alternative hypothesis, and p-values
• The logic of hypothesis testing
• Finding a p-value for a hypothesis about a proportion
• You do not need to know the material from chapters 16 and 17, such as the binomial distribution.