STA442/2101f17 Final Exam Information

Note: This information applies only to the regularly scheduled exam, not the special deferred exam.

Time and Location

The final exam will be on Tuesday December 19th from 7 to 10 p.m., in the Wallberg building at College and St. George. For your educational benefit, seating will be split according to family name, as follows: I believe this applies to both graduate and undergraduate students.

Office Hours for the Final

The Bahen Centre for Information Technology is on St. George St. just North of College.

Format

You will write your answers on the question paper. The exam will be closed book and closed notes. You should bring a calculator with a natural log/exponential key. Any kind is acceptable unless it has communications capability. Pencil is okay.

There are 8 questions, occupying 14 pages including the cover page, R printout and space for you to write the answers. Many of the questions have more than one part. The questions are not equally difficult, and not equally time-consuming. The questions on assignments and quizzes are a good indication of what to expect. It is a three-hour exam.

Coverage

The final exam is cumulative. What you are supposed to be able to do is indicated by the assignments. If you are wondering whether you're responsible for something, look in the assignments. If it's asked, you're responsible for it. If it's not asked, then you may safely disregard it. This applies to concepts and methods of course, not the exact wording of the questions.

A partial exception to the rule above is Assignment One, which was mostly review. Nothing from Assignment One will directly be on the final exam unless it also appears on a later assignment. Of course the knowledge needed to do Assignment One is assumed.

R

Forty points out of 100 will be based on computer output. You will not be asked to write any R code on the final. You will answer questions based on my R input and output. Questions will be based on three data sets --- maybe not all three.
  1. The math data: This data set was used in Assignments 2 and 3. The variables are Recall that the data have rough edges, and we agreed on ways to fix them. Presumably you have already done this, but just in case,
  2. The noise data: Participants listened to brief political discussions under 5 levels of background noise. "Discrimination score" is a measure of how well they could tell what was being said. There are 5 lines of data per case. The variables are I'm not going to use Time in my analysis.
  3. The hook shot data: Right handed basketball players took right and left-handed hook shots from the left baseline, the right baseline and the middle. Hit or miss was recorded for each shot. Primary interest is in testing for main effects and interactions.

To prepare for this part of the exam, you should do some reasonable, predictable things like what I did in lecture and what you did in the homework. Think about what the results mean. That way you will be able to understand what I did a lot more rapidly and easily. Be able to draw plain-language, directional conclusions. At the very least, familiarize yourself with the data and understand what all the variables are. This is important because we will answer questions about the data during the exam only if the answers are very brief.

Quizzes and Past Exams

Quizzes with answers. Except for Quiz 11, there will be no further discussion of marking now that my answers are public. Computer printouts are not included.

Past exams

Project for STA2101

Hard copy is due the evening of the final exam.