Class meetings: Tue/Thu 11:30 a.m.–12:50 p.m. in MCMILLAN 0G052. Midterm: Tuesday, October 13. Thursday, October 8 is an independent review day with no in-person class. Topic pacing may be adjusted during the semester.
| Week | Class dates | Topics and milestones | Textbook sections | Lecture notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · Aug 24–28 | Tue Aug 25Thu Aug 27 | Course orientation; review of moment-generating functions; special distributions and relationships among them. | Review; §§3.5–3.6 | 1. Special Distributions |
| 2 · Aug 31–Sep 4 | Tue Sep 1Thu Sep 3 | Special and sampling distributions; transformation ideas; introduction to statistical inference and point estimation. | §§3.5–3.6; §4.1 | 1. Special Distributions 2. Introduction to Statistical Inference |
| 3 · Sep 7–11 | Tue Sep 8Thu Sep 10 | Bias, variance, mean squared error, consistency, and introductory confidence intervals. | §§4.1–4.2 | 2. Introduction to Statistical Inference |
| 4 · Sep 14–18 | Tue Sep 15Thu Sep 17 | Confidence intervals and pivots; hypothesis-testing framework; Z, t, and F procedures. | §4.2; §§4.5–4.6 | 2. Introduction to Statistical Inference |
| 5 · Sep 21–25 | Tue Sep 22Thu Sep 24 | Chi-square testing; order statistics and their distributions. | §4.7; §§4.4, 4.8 | 3. Chi-square Tests 4. Order Statistics |
| 6 · Sep 28–Oct 2 | Tue Sep 29Thu Oct 1 | Order statistics continued; synthesis of pre-midterm material. | §§4.4–4.8 | 4. Order Statistics |
| 7 · Oct 5–9 | Tue Oct 6 · Fall BreakThu Oct 8 · Independent review; no in-person class | Fall Break Oct 3–6 Students use the posted review materials to prepare independently for the midterm. |
Pre-midterm material | Review materials distributed in Canvas |
| 8 · Oct 12–16 | Tue Oct 13 · MidtermThu Oct 15 | Midterm Tuesday, 11:30 a.m.–12:50 p.m., MCMILLAN 0G052. Modes of convergence and asymptotic reasoning begin Thursday. |
Pre-midterm material; §5.1 | 5. Convergence |
| 9 · Oct 19–23 | Tue Oct 20Thu Oct 22 | Modes of convergence, laws of large numbers, and the central limit theorem; likelihood functions and maximum-likelihood estimators. | §§5.1–5.3; §6.1 | 5. Convergence 6. Likelihood Function and MLE Properties |
| 10 · Oct 26–30 | Tue Oct 27Thu Oct 29 | Fisher information; Cramér–Rao lower bound and efficiency. | §6.2 | 7. Fisher Information 8. Cramér–Rao Theory |
| 11 · Nov 2–6 | Tue Nov 3Thu Nov 5 | Cramér–Rao theory continued; likelihood-ratio tests. | §§6.2–6.4 | 8. Cramér–Rao Theory 9. Likelihood-ratio Tests |
| 12 · Nov 9–13 | Tue Nov 10Thu Nov 12 | Likelihood-ratio methods and general testing; introduction to sufficient statistics. | §§6.3–6.4; §7.2 | 9. Likelihood-ratio Tests 10. Sufficiency |
| 13 · Nov 16–20 | Tue Nov 17Thu Nov 19 | Sufficiency and the factorization theorem; complete families and their consequences. | §§7.2–7.7 | 10. Sufficiency 11. Completeness I |
| 14 · Nov 23–27 | Tue Nov 24Thu Nov 26 · Thanksgiving Break | Completeness continued. Thanksgiving Break Nov 25–29 | §§7.4–7.7 | 11. Completeness I 12. Completeness II |
| 15 · Nov 30–Dec 4 | Tue Dec 1Thu Dec 3 · Last SDS 4020 meeting | UMVUE and Lehmann–Scheffé ideas; Neyman–Pearson lemma and uniformly most powerful tests; final review as time permits. | §§7.1, 7.3; §§8.1–8.3 | 12. Completeness II 13. UMP Tests |
| Finals · Dec 10–16 | Exact date, time, and location assigned by the university | Cumulative final examination | Cumulative | Practice materials distributed in Canvas |
Calendar anchors: first day of classes August 24; Labor Day September 7; Fall Break October 3–6; Thanksgiving Break November 25–29; last day of classes December 7; reading days December 8–9; final exams December 10–16.