Mth102 Instructor File

Updated March, 2017

Committee members: Naima Bahaji, Chalyce Deterding, Lori Jones, Dan Kernler, and Phil Pardun. Contact any of us if you have any questions!

Text

Supplements

· This book is published by Pearson and comes with access to MyStatLab when a new text is purchased through the bookstore.

· By default, when students have access to MyStatLab, they also have access to StatCrunch, an online statistical tool. StatCrunch can be accessed through MyStatLab or directly at www.statcrunch.com (students and faculty should use the same login as through MyStatLab).

IMPORTANT NOTE – STARTING WITH THIS EDITION, ALL MYSTATLAB CODES ARE ASSOCIATED WITH A PARTICULAR TEXT.

We recommend that you have some training on these systems before requiring them of your students.

· Instructor’s edition of the full textbook are available from Vicki. Additionally, you can get copies of the Instructors Solutions Manual.

· A copy of a guidebook for the Texas Instruments TI-83/84 calculators which Dan Kernler created for this course and Mth120 is available on the Mth102 Course page in the Math Department Handbook.

Technology Guidelines

Graphing Calculator such as TI-84 is required. Instruction should include use of the following features: creating and editing lists; calculating sample mean, median, and standard deviation; histograms; modified boxplots; normal probability plots. Instructors may prohibit use of the TI-89; Excel is optional.

Technology note: If you prefer to use an alternative technology like StatCrunch or Excel, you must teach the equivalent skills within that technology.

Topics

The topics for this course were reviewed in Spring 2013. We came to consensus on a few general issues:

Technology should be utilized liberally. Emphasis in the course should be placed on interpreting results, not on formulaic calculations.
Correlation and regression should be included, but a one or two-day lesson on scatter plots, calculating r and R2, and finding the least-squares regression line using technology should suffice. Emphasis should be placed on the general concept.
The theory behind hypothesis testing and confidence intervals about the mean when the population standard deviation is known should be minimized, with emphasis placed on the more practical case when it is unknown.
Instructors are free to address probability a bit lighter, if necessary.

We correlated the topics with the new text and attempted to provide guidelines for the number of class sessions for each topic. These are, of course, only suggestions. Please provide us with feedback and critique as the semester progresses.

Note: The hours below are 50 minute class hours. The time for each chapter is inclusive of time you spend both teaching and assessment (pre-tests, quizzes, chapter tests, etc.)

Chapter 1: Data Collection
· Feel free to cover Section 1.6 at less depth than other sections. / 4 hours
Chapter 2: Organizing and Summarizing Data
· Be sure to emphasize the use of technology. / 4 hours
Chapter 3: Numerically Summarizing Data
· Emphasis can be placed on using technology and interpreting results, rather than deriving calculation formulas, though many faculty do still require students to make calculations using formulas. / 5 hours
Chapter 5: Probability
· Probability is a rich topic, but to allow further investigations later in the course, try to limit the amount of time spent in this chapter to no more than 4 or 5 class periods. / 5 hours
Chapter 6: Discrete Probability Distributions
· The variance and standard deviation of discrete random variables may be superficially covered, with greater emphasis placed on the expected value instead. / 5 hours
Chapter 7: The Normal Probability Distribution
· Section 7.3 Assessing Normality should be addressed emphasizing technology.
· Section 7.4 Normal Approximation to the Binomial may be skipped. / 4 hours
Chapter 8: Sampling Distributions / 4 hours
Chapter 9: Estimating the Value of a Parameter / 6 hours
Chapter 10: Hypothesis Testing / 6 hours
Chapter 4: Describing the Relation between Two Variables
· A heavy focus on calculator use and analysis rather than formulas / 3 hours
46 hours**

** We expect everyone to give a cumulative final over the last two hours (possibly over two days) giving the total of 48 hours for the semester.