Psychology 240 Syllabus
Statistics 1

Illinois State University
J. Cooper Cutting
Fall 1998, Section 04

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Contact Information

Instructor: J. Cooper Cutting
Office: De Garmo 421
Phone: 438-2999
e-mail: cutting@main.psy.ilstu.edu
office hours: Mon 10:30-11:30, Tue 1-2, & by appointment

General Course Information

Where and When?MW 5:30-6:45 PM in Schroeder 216

Course Description & Objective.

Application and interpretation of basic statistics used in the behavioral sciences: descriptive statistics, simple hypothesis testing and two-variable regression.

Course Requirements. Each student will be evaluated based on their performance on 3 exams, 1 final exam, homework, and quizzes. The breakdown is presented below.
points
1 final exam150
3 exams100 each (300)
14 homeworks15 each (210)
14 vocab quizzes 10 each (140)
total800 pts

  • Homework will typically be due every Monday at the beginning of class. If you are going to miss class that day, either have somebody turn your homework in for you, or turn it into me early. To turn it in early, please bring it to the main office (DeGarmo 435) and ask that it be placed in the instructor's mail box. One final point about homework, it must be neat. If the homework cannot be read, then it cannot be graded, and no credit will be given. So make sure that your work is neat and legible.

  • Additionally, students may gain an additional 30 pts of extra credit through participation as research participants. Students sign up on sheets in the basement of DeGarmo Hall. Students are expected to respect the sign-up process (that is sign up only once for a particular experiment, and once signed up, to attend and complete their appointment). For each hour of participation a student will get 6 points (so to get the maximum amount of extra credit, students must participate in 5 hours of experiments). At the experiment students will be given a 'blue card' that documents their participation. To get the extra credit, these blue cards must be turned into the instructor no later than November 30th. No blue cards will be accepted in December.

    Class Policies

  • If you are going to miss a quiz or an exam it is critically important that you notify me AS SOON AS YOU KNOW that you'll be absent and WHY. Call, e-mail, or talk to me in person. Make-ups are very rarely given without prior notification of an absences. Opportunity to make-up the missed work requires prior notification of the absence and an excused absence (that is one that you instructor accepts as reasonable and legitimate). How and when the work will be made up will be determined by the instructor.
  • You are expected to do your own work. Plagiarism and cheating of any sort will not be tolerated. Either behavior will result in a grade of 'F'. Note that cheating includes copying another student's homework. Making up false excuses for absences will also be considered cheating and may result in a grade of 'F' for missed work.
  • And finally, if you have any questions regarding anything in the syllabus and or the course in general, please feel free to ask. Talk to me in class, via phone, or e-mail. Don't just assume that you know (or should know) the answer, I may not have been clear enough or may have forgotten to mention something.

    Required Textbooks

  • Gravetter, F. J., Wallnau, L. B. (1996). Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences: A First Course for Students of Psychology and Education, 4th Edition. New York: West Publishing.
  • Holcomb, Z. C. (1998). Interpreting Basic Statistics: A Guide and Workbook Based on Excerpts from Journal Articles, 2nd Edition. Los Angeles, CA: Pyrczak.

    Topics

    Date Tentative topic calendar Readings & Lectures
    Gr = Gravetter
    Ho = Holcomb    		 Homework
    WK1 (Aug24,26) Intro to Statistics & Measurement Chpt 1, Gr Homework #1
    WK2 (Aug 31,Sept 2) Frequency Distributions
    Central Tendency     		Chpt 2, Gr
    Chpt 3, Gr     		Homework #2
    WK3 (Sept 9) Variability Chpt 4, Gr Homework #3
    WK4 (Sept 14,16) Variability cont.
    Z-scores: Location of Scores     		Chpt 4, Gr Homework #4
    WK5 (Sept 21,23) Z-scores: Standardized Distributions
    Introduction to Probability     		Chpt 6, Gr Homework #5
    WK6 (Sept 28,30) Probability cont.
    Catch-up & review
    WK7 (Oct 5,7) Oct 5 - Exam Chpts 1-6
    Probability, Samples, & the Distribution of Sample Means
    		Chpt 7, Gr Homework #6
    WK8 (Oct 12,14) Prob & Dist of Means cont.
    Intro to Hypothesis Testing     		Chpt 8, Gr Homework #7
    WK9 (Oct 19,21) Introduction to the t-statistic
    Hypothesis testing w/ 2 indepedent samples     		Chpt 9, Gr
    Chpt 10, Gr     		Homework #8
    WK10 (Oct 26,28) Hypothisis testing w/ 2 related samples
    Estimation     		Chpt 11, Gr
    Chpt 12, Gr     		Homework #9
    WK11 (Nov 2,4) More on Estimation
    Catch-up and review     		Homework #10
    WK12 (Nov 9,11) Nov 9 - Exam Chpts 7-12
    Introduction to ANOVA     		Chpt 13, Gr Homework #11
    WK13 (Nov 16,18) ANOVA cont.
    ANOVA cont.     		Homework #12
    WK14 (Nov 23) Correlations and Regression
    Correlations & Regression cont     		Chpt 16, Gr Homework #13
    WK15 (Nov 30,Dec 2) Catch-up and review
    Catch-up and review
    WK16 (Dec 7,9) Dec 7 - Exam Chpts 13 & 16
    Review for the Final Exam     		Homework #14
    Finals Week FINAL EXAM
    Mon. Dec. 14 @ 5:30 PM

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    If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at cutting@main.psy.ilstu.edu.