Statistics Messages

Final Exam Review

(posted: 16 Dec 2025)

The final exam is scheduled for Mon 05 Jan at 1pm. To help you prepare, I created a final exam review. If you work through it, you'll be very well-prepared for the final exam.

Goodness of Fit

(posted: 16 Dec 2025)

This week (16 and 18 Dec), we'll continue our discussion of linear regression and discuss goodness of fit. To prepare, please read Illowsky and Dean, chap. 13 and please read my notes on regression. And please work through homework 8, which makes use of the US state dataset.

Linear Regression

(posted: 07 Dec 2025)

This week (09 and 11 Dec), we'll finish our discussion of homework 7, which makes use of the GDP per worker dataset and the US labor market dataset. And we'll continue our discussion of linear regression. To prepare, please read Illowsky and Dean, chaps. 9, 10, 11 and 12 and please read my notes on regression.

Learning to Walk Straight

(posted: 07 Dec 2025)

When writing, it's important to write correctly. And it's important to present your (correct) writing well. The latter is why American college students (regardless of major) study literature, foreign languages, art and music. Those courses teach you to find more than one way to express a thought and to find the best presentation of that thought.

Because this is a course in Statistics, I focused on whether you answered correctly when reading your exams. Perhaps I should also have considered how well you presented your answer.

In life, you will need to know how "walk straight," so I must teach you how to "walk straight." With that in mind, please watch this short video about why crabs walk sideways. And then please watch this poem about teaching crabs to walk straight.

When watching the poem video, notice how the translator preserved the rhythm, meter and rhyme of the original poem. To preserve those elements, the translator needed to find many different ways to express the same thought. Then he selected the best presentation of that thought.

Computer technology augments your writing skills. If you write well with pen and paper, then you will also write well with a computer. If you do not write well with pen and paper, then the computer will not have any writing skills to augment.

I want you to learn how to write well with pen and paper, so that you learn to find many different ways to express a thought and so that you learn how to present your thoughts well.

Hypothesis Tests and Linear Regression

(posted: 20 Nov 2025)

On Thu 20 Nov, we'll finish our discussion of hypothesis testing and begin a discussion of linear regression. To prepare, please read Illowsky and Dean, chaps. 9, 10, 11 and 12 and please read my notes on regression.

Then, after the Thanksgiving break, we'll discuss homework 7, which makes use of the GDP per worker dataset and the US labor market dataset.

Midterm Exam

(posted: 09 Nov 2025)

On Tue 11 Nov, we will hold the midterm exam. You will not need a calculator. What you will need is a pen and a good understanding of the course material.

To prepare, please study the midterm review. If you work through it, you'll be very well-prepared.

Tour of the New York Fed

(posted: 27 Oct 2025)

Dear Students,

An opportunity that may interest you:  Prof. James Kahn has arranged a tour of the New York Fed on Wednesday, December 3, at 1:30pm.

He arranged the tour for his Money and Banking classes, but all are welcome. The tour would be especially interesting to students of economics ... and to Bruce Willis fans (because the tour includes the legendary gold vault featured in "Die Hard with a Vengeance").

The tour is about an hour. So you would have to leave the Wilf Campus prior to 12:30pm and you probably return at around 3:30pm.

If you're interested, please either reply to me or indicate your interest at the Canvas Quiz, which I created for this purpose. I will then pass your information to Prof. Kahn and I hope you'll have fun.

Sincerely,
- EMW

Normal Distribution and Parameter Estimation

(posted: 27 Oct 2025)

This week (28 and 30 Oct) we'll discuss the Normal Distribution. To prepare, please read Illowsky and Dean, chaps. 5 and 6.

Then, next week (04 and 06 Nov), we'll discuss Parameter Estimation. To prepare, please read Illowsky and Dean, chaps. 7 and 8.

Probability and Midterm Review

(posted: 21 Oct 2025)

This afternoon, we'll resume our discussion of probability and the binomial distribution. To prepare, please read Illowsky and Dean, chaps. 3 and 4.

The midterm exam is several weeks away. Nonetheless, several students have asked for a midterm review. If you work through it, you'll be very well-prepared for the midterm exam.

Zoom Again and Probability

(posted: 16 Oct 2025)

I hope you're enjoying the holidays. We will meet via Zoom on Thu 16 Oct to resume our discussion of probability and the binomial distribution. To prepare, please read Illowsky and Dean, chaps. 3 and 4.

Below are the details for tomorrow's meeting:

Zoom and Probability

(posted: 29 Sep 2025)

I hope you're enjoying the holidays. We will meet via Zoom on Tue 30 Sep and on Thu 16 Oct to discuss probability and the binomial distribution. To prepare, please read Illowsky and Dean, chaps. 3 and 4.

Below are the meeting details for our session on Tue 30 Sep:

Bell's Palsy Trial

(posted: 14 Sep 2025)

On Thu 18 Sep, we'll explore a dataset from a clinical trial. Below are links to:

Mean and Variance

(posted: 12 Sep 2025)

This message outlines the lesson plans for our sessions on Tue 16 Sep and Thu 18 Sep.

On Tuesday, we'll discuss lecture 2 on measures of central tendency and measures of variability. To prepare, please read Illowsky and Dean, chap. 2.

Then, as promised, on Thursday, we'll discuss the dataset from medicine. I'm still finishing the discussion questions. I'll post it on Sunday morning (14 Sep).

Data Analysis

(posted: 31 Aug 2025)

This message outlines the lesson plans for our sessions on Tue 02 Sep and Thu 04 Sep as well as for our sessions on Tue 09 Sep and Thu 11 Sep.

After finishing our introductory discussions of the Octopus Test and the effect of the minimum wage, we will begin the theoretical component of the course with an introduction to data analysis. After that, we'll discuss measures of central tendency and measures of variability.

To prepare, please read Illowsky and Dean, chaps. 1 and 2. Then please begin working on homework 2.

Welcome to Statistics

(updated: 21 Aug 2025)

Welcome to Statistics. This website helps me organize the course. I hope you find it helpful.

I have posted a copy of the syllabus. Please review it and the materials listed on the statistics page. And in case you ever need them, I keep old messages on the message board page. I hope this way of organizing the course helps.

textbook and software

The textbook that we will use is Illowsky and Dean's (2023) Introductory Statistics, 2e. As a publication of OpenStax – a non-profit initiative that creates peer-reviewed, openly licensed textbooks – it's available in PDF and web versions at no cost and it's available in a printed version at low-cost.

To conduct a statistical analysis, we'll use Gretl because its drop-down menus make it easy to learn statistics. And it's open-source, so its price is zero and its users continuously enhance the software.

let's get started

I'd like to begin the semester with a pair of introductory discussions that will help you appreciate the theory that we'll discuss this semester.

In the first discussion, I'd like to compare Statistics and Machine Learning. The specific topic will be the "octopus test" that Bender and Koller developed in their 2020 paper, "Climbing towards NLU." To help you understand it, I have prepared some notes on Bender and Koller's paper. And for fun, be sure to read Appendix A of the paper. It's hilarious.

In the second discussion, I'd like to focus on a policy issue that we'll discuss later in the semester. The specific topic will be how the minimum wage affects employment. For that discussion, please study my monopsonist and minimum wage problem and please read my analysis of minimum wage, employment and annual pay.

I hope you'll enjoy the discussions. I'm looking forward to working with you this semester.

Sincerely,
- Eryk Wdowiak

<< back to the Statistics page

Copyright © 2002-2025 Eryk Wdowiak