Instructor: Jimin Ding
Office: Cupples I, Room 112A;
Email: jmding@math.wustl.edu
Office hours: Wed. 11:10 am -12:00pm. Fri. 4:10 pm.-5:30pm. or by appointment.
AI: Jiayi Fu, Yuchen Han, Di Wu
AI office hours: Thur. 2-3:30 pm., Cupples I, RM 8 (Basement) .
UPDATES April 2020
Given the feedbacks collected from the survey and zoom meetings in the first two weeks of online math 3200, we decide to keep the lectures in live zoom meetings and post the recorded lectures after 11 am. on MWF.
The course materials including lecture notes, solution to the examples in the lecture notes, and practice questions will be published before the lectures on a weekly basis. To engage more discussions and active learning, we will go through lecture notes and examples during live zoom meetings, with the hope that students' questions can be answered in real time and instant feedback may prompt further critical thinking. Live conversation at the designed time is also a method of time blocking that eliminates distraction to help students study more efficiently.
The last 20 minutes of each zoom meeting will involve group work on the posted practice questions, which is used to encourage discussions and supplement classroom activities. Past experiences have shown that participation in group discussions can significantly deepen the understanding of the material and make learning more fun. To be intellectually stimulating, the solutions will be posted only after each zoom meeting in a separate subfolder in WUSTL BOX.
Although attending live zoom meetings is strongly suggested, the recorded zoom meetings, including lectures, questions, and solutions to practice questions, will be shared via WUSTL BOX for those who can not participate zoom meeting synchronously.
Homework is now due on Friday to allow more time for quesitons.
All course materials and recorded zoom meetings will be shared via WUSTL BOX. There are five subfolders: Homework and Solution, Lecture Notes, Practice Questions, Recorded Zoom Meetings, Solutions to Practice Questions. The files are named by week or date.
UPDATES MARCH 2020 - Information for Online Math3200
In compliance with the university's COVID-19 contingency plan, the second half of this course will be held online, starting from March 23rd through the end of semester, April. 24th.
The complete lecture notes are posted online at https://www.math.wustl.edu/~jmding/math3200/combinedhandout.pdf.
The detailed schedule and coverage of the lecture notes and textbook are updated at
https://www.math.wustl.edu/~jmding/math3200/h3200.html.
Many activities indicated below will be in zoom. You will need to sign in on zoom.us the first time you open Zoom. The WashU zoom main site https://wustl.zoom.us/ has good documentation and you can practice the "join a test meeting".
The following lists changes to the structure and schedule of Math 3200 that we are making as a result. We may refine things and make changes based on the feedbacks as we figure out certain things does not work well.
- Pre-recorded Lectures and Solution to Examples.
These will be published approximately weekly, and you are expected to watch and read them on your own time. Together with live class in zoom, they replace in-person class time. There will be three 10-minutes recorded lecture clips to watch per week. Solutions to the examples in the lecture notes will be posted together with the pre-recorded lectures.
- Live class sessions in Zoom.
The original lecture time will be split into two zoom meetings. The first 15 minutes will be a Question and Answer session, which is designed to discuss the most recent reading assignment and recorded lectures. And the second 35 minutes will be a Group Work session, which is used to encourage interactive participation and stimulate a group learning environment virtually. You can attend either 9 am. or 10 am. session, regardless of which lecture you are enrolled in. The practice problems and their solutions will be posted after 11am. to accommodate the students who cannot attend.
- Virtual office hours.
All recitation sessions will be reformatted as virtual office hours hold by the AI's and help students with homework. All original office hours will be hold in zoom meetings as well. Together with QA sessions in zoom, this will add two extra office hours per week.
- Homework.
There is not much change. We'll still do weekly homework and collect through crowdmark, due on Thursday nights (Central time). There will be an additional homework (in the last week) for you to replace your lowest homework grade.
- Exams.
The Exam III is pushed back a week, to April 14th due the the lost week of classes. The coverage and content of exam III will not be changed: 9 multiple-choice questions and 3 free-response questions, on statistical inference (excluding regression).
Final exam will still be on May 1st. It will contain 13 multiple-choice questions and 4 free-response questions.
The format of both exams will be take-home (open-book-and-open-notes). You will have approximately 24-hour window to complete each exam, and you need to upload your solutions to Crowdmark by the end of that window. You will not be allowed to collaborate on the take-home exams.
- Grading
The grading scheme in the course will remain as described below in the original syllabus.
Participation and attendance will change slightly. Iclicker participation in the first 8 weeks of lectures is used to determine the boosting points. If you participated 9 or more iclicker sessions, you will get 3 boosting points. If you participated 7 or 8 iclicker sessions, you will get 2 boosting points. Participation in recitation sessions will be replaced by a take-home project on R, which is worth 6 points.
Topics covered:
An introduction to probability and statistics. Major topics include elementary probability, discrete and continuous random variables, special distributions, experimental design, exploratory data analysis, estimation of mean and proportion, hypothesis testing and confidence intervals, regression, and analysis of variance. Emphasis is placed on development of statistical reasoning, basic analytic skills, and critical thinking in empirical research studies.
The standard statistical R (and RStudio), will be introduced and used in both lectures and weekly assignments. Calculator will be needed for calculations in exams. Graphing calculator with Z, t, chi-square and F distribution functions (such as the TI-83 series) may be helpful but is not required and not covered in class.
This course is rooted from Math 320, which started in 70's and was a calculus-based statistical course. Math 3200 is an upgraded version of math 2200. Math 3200 is equired for students pursuing a major or minor in mathematics or wishing to take 400 level or above statistics courses.
Prerequisites:
Math 132. Though Math 233 is not essential, it is strongly recommended since we use partial derivatives and multiple integrals.
Textbook:
Akritas
Probability and Statistics with R for Engineers and Scientists
Pearson, 2015.
(http://pearsonhighered.com/akritas)
Download the exercise data file.
Remarks:
- Solutions to the odd number problems are in the back of the book.
- We will cover selected topics from Chapters 1-12. Detailed schedule will be updated periodically on the course website.
- A course reserved desk copy of the textbook will be available in Olin library for 1 day use.
Reference books:
Statistics and Data Analysis from Elementary to Intermediate, GA. J. Tamhane and D. D. Dunlop ,
Prentice-Hall, 2000.
Statistics, 4th Ed. D. Freedman, R. Pisani, R. Purves, W. W. Norton & Company, 2007.
OpenIntro Statistics, 4th Ed. D. Diez, M. Çetinkaya-Rundel, C. Barr, 2019 (Free downloadable)
Exams:
There will be three in-semester Tuesday evening examinations (2/4,3/3,4/7, 6:30-8:30pm.), and the final exam will be on Friday May 1st, 2020 from 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM. Midterms are not cumulative, but the final exam is comprehensive. For each exam, at least 60% of the questions will be similar with, if not exactly same as, the homework questions, and 30% will be close to the examples discussed in class.
All exams are close-notes-and-close-book. No web-enabled devices may be used. One page (letter size and one-sided) note may be brought to each midterm, and all previous midterm notes plus one page additional note may be brought to the final exam. All the distribution tables will be provided by the instructor. Calculators are allowed but not required.
Make-up exams are strongly discouraged. If you are aware of a conflict, please inform the instructor before the exam. Make-up exam will only be given if (1)within 1 week of the standard exam and (2)suitable documentation is provided within 2 days.
Homeworks:
There will be 11 homework assignments throughout the semester. The lowest homework grade will be dropped. About 10 homework problems (including 1~2 computer homework problems) will be assigned each week. The solutions to all problems will be posted on the course website (https://mycanvas.wustl.edu/), although only three of them will be graded and account toward your course grade. Most of the exam and final questions will be chosen from these problems with slight modifications. The rest of the exam questions will be similar to these. Hence you are strongly suggested to compare your answers with the posted solution.
Weekly homework should be submitted via Crowdmark by Thursday 11:59pm. NO LATE HOMEWORK WILL BE ACCEPTED.
The computer homework will count as 20% of the course grade.
Examples of R programs and output will be posted in the solution and discussed in class.
Homework collection via crowdmark: Only PDF and JPEG format are accepted.
You will receive a link in email to submit your homework on crowdmark. After you finish homework, you need to upload your work for each homework question separately. Simply drag and drop your files to the upload areas under the questions or browse to locate them. You can drag pages between questions, and add or delete more pages under each questions. Please DO NOT upload your entire file to all homework questions, but only keep the related pages to each question. If you upload pictures of your homework, please make sure your pictures are sharp enough to be graded. Please ensure the uploaded pages are in order and rotated correctly.
After your work is graded, you will receive another link in email to review your score and grading comments.
Grades:
Your grade will be based on weekly homework, 3 midterms and final. Then your course letter grade is determined as follows. The A range will be 85 to 100, the B range will be 70 to 85, the C range will be 60 to 70, and the D range will be 50 to 60, with plus and minus grades given to the top 10% and bottom 10% students in each of these ranges. If you register for ``Pass/Fail'' (or ``Credit/No Credit''), you must achieve at least 60 to pass, which is the lowest score for a C-.
| Midterm exams |
15% each |
| Final exam |
25% |
| Homework |
30% |
Collaboration:
Collaboration on homework is allowed and can be helpful (and fun). However, you must do all written work by yourself, both answers to homework questions and computer programs. If you collaborate with someone on a homework, list his or her
name in a note at the top of the first part of your homework.
There should be NO COLLABORATION on exams.
Following "the academic integrity policy", academic misconducts and dishonesty will be reported to the university academic integrity office and seriously affect the grade.
Attendance:
Class attendance is encouraged and will be tracked with iClickers. Experience has shown that students who attend class regularly perform better on average. Lectures will involve discussion of topics and usually help students understand the material. Completing the reading assignments is not a substitute for attending lecture, nor is attending lecture a substitute for competing the reading assignments.
Use of iClicker:
In this course, we will be using iClicker technology during class. iClicker is FREE to check out from Olin Library for registered students.
So before Jan. 21st, 2020, please go to the Olin Library Help desk to check out an iClicker. The deadline to return your iClicker to Olin Library is the last day of classes for the semester. Students who do not return their iClickers at the conclusion of the semester will be charged for replacement of the device.
You will answer questions (vote to respond) posted in lectures with your iClicker. The number of questions may vary from lecture to lecture.
The clicker can record your participation on each question in class. Whether or not you respond with a correct answer, your regular participation can give your final score for the course a small boost.
- If you have participated by responding to at least 75% of the questions posed, 3 points will be added to your final score in the course.
- If you have participated by responding to at least 65% but less thatn 75% of the questions posed, 2 points will be added to your total course score.
To have your clicker participation recorded, you need to REGISTER your clicker for this course. Once you have checked out your clicker from the library, log in to Canvas and click on your Math 3200 course link. In the left-hand navigation menu, click on Course, then iClicker Registration. The iClicker comes with two AAA batteries, which should not need to be replaced during the semester. However, if batteries do need to be replaced, the student who has checked out the iClicker is responsible for replacing them.
Recitation Sessions:
Discussion sessions meet on Tuesdays. Please attend the session for which you are registered as seating is limited. Discussion session assignments will be completed each week and you will not have an opportunity to make up work if you miss a session due to an inexcusable absence. The two lowest grades on these assignments will be dropped. Please find room assignments and times below:
| A |
Han |
Lopata 201 |
T 8-9 AM |
| B |
Han |
Lopata 201 |
T 9-10 AM |
| C |
Wu |
Lopata 302 |
T 9-10 AM |
| D |
Wu |
Lopata 302 |
T 10-11 AM |
| E |
Fu |
Simon 018 |
T 12-1 PM |
| F |
Fu |
Simon 018 |
T 1-2 PM |
Some useful links and references: