WATCH THIS SPACE FOR ANNOUNCEMENTS!

SUCH AS: 
PLEASE TURN ALL CELL PHONES OFF DURING CLASS. THANKS!

 GUIDE 1: INTRODUCTION
GUIDE 2: CONSTRUCTING A TABLE
GUIDE 3: UNIVARIATE STATISTICS AND DISPLAYS
GUIDE 4: BIVARIATE BASICS
GUIDE 5: BIVARIATE CORRELATIONS
GUIDE 6: MULTIVARIATE CROSSTABULATIONS
GUIDE 7: BASIC REGRESSION
GUIDE 8: REGRESSION SPECIFICS
GUIDE 9: SAMPLING		 TO EDF 5400 OVERVIEW

 
EDF 5400-01       SUMMER 2003
126  Stone Building
Monday-Wednesday  11:30-1:30
INTRODUCTORY STATISTICS:
DESCRIPTION AND INFERENCE
Susan Carol Losh
Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems
Florida State University

 
Welcome to EDF 5400-01! And, if you are new to Florida State University, welcome to FSU as well.

On this site are topics, readings, and dates for assignments and exams for EDF 5400-01 Summer 2003. Watch this website over the semester for more information about each assignment. Need more information? Contact me via email:

slosh@garnet.acns.fsu.edu

 
BOOKS
ASSIGNMENTS & GRADING
WE'RE ONLINE
READINGS & ASSIGNMENT DATES

 
BASIC COURSE INFORMATION
INSTRUCTOR: Professor Susan Carol Losh
307L Stone Building 
850-644-8778 Voice
850-644-8776 FAX
 

OFFICE HOURS: 1:30-3:30 P.M. Monday & Wednesday 
& by appointment
slosh@garnet.acns.fsu.edu

 Assisted by: Mr Ryan Wilke
305A Stone Building
644-8783

CLICK HERE  to find the Stone Building

OFFICE HOURS: 11-1 Tuesdays and Thursdays
& by appointment
raw7447@garnet.acns.fsu.edu 

 
REQUIRED COURSE TEXT & LECTURES

Our textbook is:

Alan Agresti and Barbara Finlay, Statistical Methods for the Social Sciences (THIRD EDITION). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997. ISBN = 0-13-526526-6

ALL MY COURSE LECTURES will be placed on the Internet and linked in with each course topic.

The lecture urls have the general form of:

http://edf5400-01.su03.fsu.edu/Guide1.html

Each Guide is linked to every other Guide so that it is easy to navigate from one to another.
Course Guides are also linked to course topics and will be placed on our class Blackboard site (please see below).

Although I may not cover all the material in each one, you are responsible for ALL the material in each guide. That is why they are on the Internet.

I recommend that you read my online guides FIRST. They emphasize the portions of the material that I think are the most important for this course. I also think it may be easier for you to understand the text after you have read the associated guide.

Some of the material in the guides will be covered during class. However, class time will also be used for instruction related to each assignment, demonstrations, exam review, and assignment and exam feedback.
 

COURSE ASSIGNMENTS

Here is information about  assignments, exams, due dates, and course weights.

There will be three equally weighted exams, each about one hour. Each will count 25 percent toward your final grade. While each exam will focus on the immediately prior units, be advised that much of the this material is cumulative in nature. In addition, if a concept or concepts appears to give considerable trouble in one exam, there will probably be questions addressing that concept on the next exam. Exams will be a mix of short answer, short essay and multiple choice and have a strong problem-solving orientation.

Assignments are weighted so that if you make a mistake, it will not hurt your final grade to a large extent, and mistakes can then be corrected on the exams, which weight more heavily.

While each assignment focuses on unit readings and other course requirements, material on data analysis is cumulative by nature. For example, the level of measurement in your variables is considered throughout.

All five assignments put together will count a total of 25 percent toward your final grade.

Details on each assignment are posted to our course WEB site prior to the due date.

For example, this will be the site for Assignment 1.

As assignments, assignment feedback, exam guides, and exam feedback sites are created and posted, watch the space at the top of the Guides for information and links.

While each assignment focuses on unit readings and other course requirements, material on data analysis is cumulative by nature. For example, the level of measurement in your variables is considered throughout.

I use plus and minus grading, throughout and for final grades. Improvement over the course of the semester is considered in grading, and exams weight more heavily  toward your final grade than exercises.

If I think you are having trouble with the material, I will alert you immediately and I expect you will seek remedial help as quickly as possible. If you receive such an alert, please take it very seriously. Do not tell me that you "really understand the material" and fail to seek help. I issue such alerts because the work makes it obvious the student DOES NOT understand the material.
LEARN MORE ABOUT GRADING: CLICK HERE. 


 
ASSIGNMENT
DUE DATE
COURSE WEIGHT
1: Introduction and category properties  May 28 5 percent
2. Central tendency and variation  June 11 5 percent
EXAM ONE (STUDY GUIDE WILL BE LINKED HERE)  June 18 25 percent
3. Two way cross tabulation and correlation coefficients
    T-test Practice		  July 2 5 percent
EXAM TWO (STUDY GUIDE WILL BE LINKED HERE)  July 9 25 percent
4. Three way cross-tabulation and causal interpretations July 14 5 percent
5. Multiple Regression  July 23 5 percent
EXAM THREE (STUDY GUIDE WILL BE LINKED HERE)  July 30 25 percent

 
IMPORTANT NOTE!    IMPORTANT!

Our exams are closed-note, closed book and are expected to be your own work ONLY. Here are some of the things you can expect to see on exams:

identifying common symbols used in statistics, such as the symbols for the mean or correlation coefficients

identifying the measurement level of a variable, then selecting the most appropriate statistics to use with it

assessing the pitfalls in thinking causally about non-experimental data--and how statistics can help (or not)

being able to recognize when results are statistically significant at conventional levels of significance for several types of statistical tests

assessing the strength of a relationship among two or more variables
 
 
A NOTE ON ASSIGNMENT DUE DATES

 

 We are on a tight schedule so assignments must reach me BY THE DUE DATE. Because of the intensive nature of this course, late assignments are not accepted.

 
 
IN GENERAL, I DO NOT ACCEPT EMAIL ATTACHMENTS! PLEASE DO NOT SEND THEM. I DO NOT OPEN THEM.

There have been too many problems with computer viruses. This is especially true for University computers, which have proven to be hotbeds of infection. 

PLEASE DO NOT SEND DOCUMENT OR HTML ATTACHMENTS TO MY E-MAIL BOX.

PLEASE DO NOT SLIDE PAPERS UNDER MY DOOR OR UNDER THE EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY SUITE DOOR!

If you slide papers under my door, they may or may not be placed on my desk--where I may not be able to find them! Anyone who has seen my desk will NEVER do anything so foolish. Similar problems occur with materials slid under the Educational Psychology and Learning Systems suite door.
 

BUT WE HAVE SOME ALTERNATIVES!
Here are some alternatives if you absolutely cannot hand assignments to me in person:
  • My office mailbox in 307 Stone Building
  • FAX to the Educational Psychology Office (850) 644-8776. Please be sure to put my name and EDF 5400 on the Cover Sheet and include the total number of pages
  • Mail (USE FIVE DAYS ADVANCE NOTICE!)  to Dr. Susan Carol Losh, Educational Research, FSU, Tallahassee, FL 32306-4453
You can fax from the road or turn assignments in a day or two early. Because of our schedule, I try to return assignments as rapidly as possible. If you are late, I just might hand them back before you turn yours in.

Sorry for the paranoia but I have been sent worms, bugs, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (trust me: you DON'T want to know), and just about every common and uncommon virus around. If you have heard of it, I almost certainly have been sent it.
 
WE’RE ONLINE!
Our course is WEB assisted through the CourseInfo/Blackboard 6.0 and WEB-MC  systems at FSU. You must be registered for edf5400-01 to access our statistics class Web site. To access our course, here is what to do. Go online to:

http://campus.fsu.edu

Enter your GARNET username (USERNAME ONLY!) and password to log in. For example, I would enter "slosh" ONLY and omit the "@garnet.acns.fsu.edu" part. Then click on “DES/INF STATSTCS APP” to enter our site. Browse the diverse categories that are available.

Each Guide (lecture) will have links posted at the top to the Course Overview, Syllabus, and all prior course Guides. This makes getting around the course material in the WEB-MC system easy. Watch the top of each Guide for announcements about assignments, exams, generic feedback, and any schedule changes.
 
 

 

NOTES FOR NET NOVICES

If you haven't used the Internet much before, it may make you nervous at first. Bear with it. The 'Net is my right arm and it makes what the average student is able to achieve in this course possible. Here are a few tips:

The web address or "url" that you see above is VERY SPECIFIC.

The url is CASE SENSITIVE. That means you must copy the capital and small letters EXACTLY.

There is NO "www" in the FSU WEB-MC system WEB addresses. DO NOT insert one. Copy the address exactly!

The number "0" is different from the letter "O". DO NOT confuse them!

.html and .htm are two totally different entities.

If you decide to become creative with these aspects of the web address, there is an excellent chance that you will not be able to access our sites and you will become very frustrated.

Some 'Net novices find it easier to just go through Blackboard and this is definitely an option.
 

 
BASIC COURSE TOPICS, READINGS, AND IMPORTANT DATES

There may be some variations from this syllabus. Please check back weekly and watch Blackboard for any announcements.
DATES
TOPICS TO BE COVERED
READINGS & ASSIGNMENTS
May 12-21 Navigating our course WEB sites
What are the characteristics of a variable?
Causality 101
What are nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio variables?		 Losh, Guide 1
Agresti & Finlay, Preface (entire)
Agresti & Finlay, Chapter 1, pp.1-9
Agresti & Finlay, Chapter 2, pp.12-17
May 28 ASSIGNMENT 1 DUE Basic univariate frequencies, recoding data, and 
percentage table construction
May 28-June 11  Everything you wanted to know about a single variable
How to construct a univariate table
Basics of the SDA online system
Percents, rates, change over time, ratios
Measures of central location & variation
Normal Curve 101
Charts, graphs, icons		 Losh, Guide 2
Losh, Guide 3
Agresti & Finlay, Chapter 3, pp. 45-67 THEN
Agresti & Finlay, Chapter 3, pp. 35-44
Agresti & Finlay, Chapter 4, SKIM entire
Focus on: pp. 86-89 AND pp. 94-111
OPTIONAL: stem & leaf plot material
June 11 ASSIGNMENT 2 DUE Central tendency and variation
  EXAM ONE REVIEW  
June 18 EXAM 1 COVERS MATERIAL THROUGH GUIDE 3
June 16-July 2 Relationships between two variables
Learning the "pieces" of a Table
Bivariate Crosstabulations
Introduction to classical hypothesis testing
Chi-Square
Correlation coefficients: ,, and 
T-tests for independent groups & extensions		 Losh, Guide 4
Losh, Guide 5
Agresti & Finlay, Chapter 8, pp. 248-266
Agresti & Finlay, Chapter 8, pp. 272-278
Agresti & Finlay, Chapter 8, pp. 282-286
Agresti & Finlay, Chapter 6, FOCUS ON:
pp. 154-159; pp. 165-167; pp. 171-177; pp. 193-198
Agresti & Finlay, Chapter 7, pp. 210-220
Agresti & Finlay, Chapter 7, pp. 232-234
(For the curious about one-way analysis of variance:
Agresti & Finlay, pp. 438-445)
  EXAM ONE FEEDBACK  
 July 2 ASSIGNMENT 3 DUE Bivariate Tables
Zero Order (Bivariate) Correlations
T-test Practice
Hypothesis Testing
 July 7-14  Measures of Association and Tabular Control
 Multivariate Crosstabulation Tables
 The Concept of Statistical Interaction
 Causal Issues in Non-experimental Data		 Losh, Guide 6
Agresti & Finlay, Chapter 10, pp. 356-373
  EXAM TWO REVIEW  
July 9 EXAM TWO COVERS MATERIAL THROUGH GUIDE 5
 July 16-21 Basics in Multiple Regression and Correlation Losh, Guide 7
Losh, Guide 8
Agresti & Finlay, Chapter 9, pp 301-342
Agresti & Finlay, Chapter 11, pp 382-404
Agresti & Finlay, Chapter 11, pp 411-421
 July 14 ASSIGNMENT 4 DUE Three-Way Crosstabulation Tables With a Control Variable
Causal Issues in Non-Experimental Data
  EXAM TWO FEEDBACK  
 July 23 ASSIGNMENT 5 DUE Working with multiple regression
 July 23-28 Sampling and Probability Losh Guide 9
Agresti & Finlay, Chapter 2, pp.18-29
Sampling distribution review
 July 28 Last day of class.
EXAM THREE REVIEW		  
July 30 EXAM THREE COVERS MATERIAL THROUGH GUIDE 9

A LECTURE (AND ASSOCIATED MATERIALS) WILL BE LINKED WITH EACH TOPIC AS THE SEMESTER PROGRESSES.
 
OVERVIEW

This page created with Netscape Composer
and is best viewed with Netscape Navigator
600 X 800 display resolution.
There may be some minor changes as the semester progresses.
Your patience is appreciated.
Susan Carol Losh
May 11 2003