STA429/1007: Statistics for the Life and Social Sciences

University of Toronto, Fall 2004

http://www.utm.toronto.edu/~jbrunner/429f04

Lecture: Tuesday 10:10 am -11:00 am and Thursday 10:10 am - 12:00 noon, Room 1070, Sidney Smith Hall

Text: There is no textbook for this course at the bookstore. A free online text is available on the course home page. Material in this text overlaps with lectures.

Topics: Vocabulary of data analysis, Tests for statistical significance, Principles of research design including experimental versus observational studies, Introduction to unix, Introduction to SAS, Multiple regression, Categorical independent variables, Interactions, Factorial ANOVA, Random effects models, Multivariate regression and analysis of variance, Repeated measures, other topics based on preferences of class members (for example logistic regression, loglinear models, path analysis).

Prerequisites: Any introductory statistics class, taught by any department.

Grading: There will be weekly quizzes given at the beginning of class every Thursday starting Sept. 23d (except no quiz on Sept. 30), for a total of 10 quizzes. Quizzes are worth 75% of the course mark. There will be a final examination worth 25% of the mark. Graduate students (those in STA1007) will also be asked to do a project. Please discuss the project with Jerry (by email if you wish) starting around early November.

If you miss a quiz the mark is zero, but your lowest quiz mark will be dropped.

There will be an assignment for each quiz. The knowledge you need to do each quiz is a subset of the knowledge you need to do the corresponding assignment. Some (most) of the assignments include a computer part. You will bring printouts to the quiz and answer questions based on the printouts. Possibly, one of the quiz questions will be to hand in a printout. The non-computer parts of the assignments are just to prepare you for the quizzes; they will never be handed in.

Plagiarism: The computer assignments are not group projects. It is fine to discuss the assignments and to learn from each other, but don't copy. Never look at anyone else's printouts (especially the input) or show anyone your printouts before the quiz or exam when they might be handed in.