Sociology 274, Section 03 Social Statistics

Sociology 274, Section 03 – Social Statistics Fall 2008, MWF 9-9:50, Chavez 304 Instructor: Jeremiah Coldsmith Office Phone: (520)621-1089 Office: Social Science Building, Room 426 Email Address: [email protected] Webpage URL: www.u.arizona.edu/~jeremiah Office Hours: 10:30-Noon, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday

Course Description and Goals: The primary objective of the course is to teach you the basic concepts and techniques of statistical description and elementary statistical inference, as they are applied to social science data. Many people enter the stats course being afraid of the math. While a basic understanding of algebra is necessary to do statistics (and an understanding of trigonometry and calculus doesn’t hurt), statistics isn’t really a math course. Statistics isn’t about the math. The main goal of statistics is to understand the world around us. We’ll use math to help us come to that understanding, but the numbers, equations, and procedures are meaningless without understanding what those things mean. The math is simple enough, understanding what the math is telling us is the most important goal of the course. By the end of the course you’ll understand descriptive statistics and have a sound foundation in basic statistical procedures and interpretation.

Prerequisites: Completion of Soc 101 and Math 110 with passing grades is required in order to take this course. If you have not passed Math 110 (or a substitutable higher-level math course), you will be dropped from this course automatically. If you have any questions, please see Sociology Department Coordinator Vienna Marum, room 407, Social Science Building (621-1543; [email protected]).

Required Materials: There is one required textbook for this class. The bibliographical citation for the book is:

Aron, Arthur, Elaine Aron, and Elliot Coups. (2008) Statistics for the Behavioral and Social Sciences: A Brief Course. 4th Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

You also need a basic calculator. It must be able to calculate squares and square roots. However, it cannot have the ability to store information. Graphing calculators and your cell phone are examples of calculators that will not be allowed. 2

You need to bring your book and calculator to every class. Failure to do so means you will not be able to fully participate and will miss out on a valuable opportunity to learn the material. Assignments, Exams, and Grading: Attendance: Attendance is not assigned any points in the course. However, statistics is a challenging subject for many students. Nearly all students find statistics impossible to learn without regular class attendance. Because statistics builds on itself, every class covers material you need to understand in order to understand material covered on subsequent days. Additionally, class time is the best opportunity for you to ask questions and get clarification on problems and issues that arise when doing your assignments. Failing to attend class on a regular basis will make it nearly impossible to learn the material and thus pass the course.

Assignments: There are two types of assignments for this course: 1) In-class assignments will be completed in groups. I’ll assign your groups the first week of class. These will be your groups for the entire course. These assignments are designed to practice and reinforce material covered in lecture. 2) Homework assignments will be completed outside of class. These are assigned after readings so you can apply the material in the text to problems. Often you will think you understand the book material until you sit down to work out a problem. These assignments are designed to help you realize what you don’t understand and what you need to ask about in class the next day. Often in statistics it isn’t what you know, but your ability to identify what you don’t understand that separates the “A” students from everyone else. Neither type of assignment will be collected or graded. However, failing to complete the assignments will make the readings and lectures much less useful to you. Therefore, failing to keep up with the assignments will likely be reflected in a much lower grade than you would have been able to achieve otherwise.

Exams: There are four exams and one final exam in the class. Because later concepts build on earlier ones, all five exams are cumulative, though they focus on the most recently covered material. The first four exams are worth 100 points and consist of problems designed to test both your ability to perform the appropriate calculations and your ability to correctly interpret the results of these calculations. The final exam is entirely cumulative and will ask you to perform the full range of techniques learned in the course. The final exam is worth 200 points and is designed to test the full range of knowledge accumulated throughout the course. For all the exams you’ll be allowed to bring with you one 3X5 index card with anything you want on it, in addition to scrap paper, your calculator, and a pen or pencil. I’ll provide you with any tables you may need.

Grading: The class has a total of 600 points. This produces the following breakdown of grades: 540-600 A 480-539 B 420-479 C 3

360-419 D 359 and below E 4

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Schedule of Classes: Note: The pace of statistics, maybe more than any other social science course, largely depends on the strengths and weaknesses of the students in the class. Some classes instantly pick up concepts that take other classes a week to fully understand. It is nearly impossible to predict ahead of time what each class will require. Therefore, this schedule of classes is only approximate. We may need to slow down or speed up at any point. I may also decide that additional homework is needed for you to get further practice with concepts or procedures the class is struggling with. This is an additional reason why attending regularly is of utmost importance.

Part I: Descriptive Statistics

Monday, August 25th: Introduction to the Course Reading to be done by the next class: Chapter 1 Homework to be done by the next class: Pages 25-27, Numbers 1-3 and 13, 14

Wednesday, August 27th: The Language of Statistics Reading to be done by the next class: No New Reading Homework to be done by the next class: Pages 25-27, Numbers 4-10 and 15-19

Friday, August 29th: Frequencies Reading to be done by the next class: Chapter 2, Pages 32-39 Homework to be done by the next class: Pages 58-60, Numbers 1, 2, and 13-16 parts a and b ONLY for all 6 problems.

Monday, September 1st: No Class – Labor Day

Wednesday, September 3rd: Finding the Center of a Distribution Reading to be done by the next class: Chapter 2, Pages 39-55 Homework to be done by the next class: Pages 58-60, Numbers 1-4, 13-16, and 18, 19

Friday, September 5th: Describing the Spread of the Distribution Reading to be done by the next class: No New Reading Homework to be done by the next class: Pages 59-60, Numbers 5-9 and 20-23

Monday, September 8th: Z-Scores Reading to be done by the next class: No New Reading Homework to be done by the next class: No New Homework 6

Wednesday, September 10th: Z-Scores Continued Reading to be done by the next class: No New Reading Homework to be done by the next class: No New Homework

Friday, September 12th: Preparing for Exam 1

Monday, September 15th: Exam 1

Part II: The Foundation for Inferential Statistics

Wednesday, September 17th: Introducing Probability Reading to be done by the next class: Chapter 4 Homework to be done by the next class: Worksheet Handed Out in Class

Friday, September 19th: Calculating Probability Reading to be done by the next class: No New Reading Homework to be done by the next class: No New Homework Note: Last Day to Drop With No Record

Monday, September 22nd: Calculating Probability Continued Reading to be done by the next class: No New Reading Homework to be done by the next class: No New Homework

Wednesday, September 24th: Fun With Probability Reading to be done by the next class: No New Reading Homework to be done by the next class: Pages 142-144, Numbers 3-5 and 16-20

Friday, September 26th: Probability, Z-Scores, and the Normal Distribution Reading to be done by the next class: No New Reading Homework to be done by the next class: No New Homework

Monday, September 29th: Probability, Z-Scores, and the Normal Distribution Continued Reading to be done by the next class: Chapter 5 Homework to be done by the next class: Pages 166-169, Numbers 2-6, 13-15, and 17

Wednesday, October 1st: Creating and Testing Hypotheses Reading to be done by the next class: No New Reading Homework to be done by the next class: No New Homework 7

Friday, October 3rd: Testing Hypotheses Continued Reading to be done by the next class: Chapter 11, Pages 359-375 Homework to be done by the next class: No New Homework

Monday, October 6th: Hypothesis Testing and Probability – Introducing χ2 (Chi-squared) Reading to be done by the next class: No New Reading Homework to be done by the next class: Pages 399-402, Numbers 1, 3, 4a, 13, 15 independence test ONLY for 13 and 15.

Wednesday, October 8th: Calculating χ2 Reading to be done by the next class: No New Reading Homework to be done by the next class: No New Homework

Friday, October 10th: Calculating χ2 Continued Reading to be done by the next class: No New Reading Homework to be done by the next class: No New Homework

Monday, October 13th: Preparing for Exam 2

Wednesday, October 15th: Exam 2

Part III: Inferential Statistics

Friday, October 17th: The Distribution of Means Reading to be done by the next class: Chapter 6 Homework to be done by the next class: Page 197, Numbers 1-3 and 6-8 parts a and b ONLY for 6, 7, and 8. Note: Last Day to Drop With a “W”.

Monday, October 20th: Hypothesis Testing with the Distribution of Means Reading to be done by the next class: No New Reading Homework to be done by the next class: Pages 197-201, Numbers 4-7 and 12, 15, 19

Wednesday, October 22nd: Confidence Intervals Reading to be done by the next class: No New Reading Homework to be done by the next class: No New Homework

Friday, October 24th: Confidence Intervals Continued Reading to be done by the next class: Chapter 7 Homework to be done by the next class: Pages 231-232, Numbers 4, 5, 13, and 14 8

Monday, October 27th: Significance, Magnitude, and Power Reading to be done by the next class: Chapter 8, Pages 234-246 Homework to be done by the next class: TBA

Wednesday, October 29th: Moving Beyond Populations – The Single Sample t-Test Reading to be done by the next class: No New Reading Homework to be done by the next class: TBA

Friday, October 31st: Single Sample t-Test Continued Reading to be done by the next class: Chapter 8, Pages 246-261 Homework to be done by the next class: TBA

Monday, November 3rd: The Dependent Means t-Test Reading to be done by the next class: No New Reading Homework to be done by the next class: TBA

Wednesday, November 5th: Dependent Means t-Test Continued Reading to be done by the next class: Chapter 9 Homework to be done by the next class: TBA

Friday, November 7th: Independent Means t-Test Reading to be done by the next class: No New Reading Homework to be done by the next class: TBA

Monday, November 10th: Independent Means t-Test Continued Reading to be done by the next class: No New Reading Homework to be done by the next class: TBA

Wednesday, November 12th: Independent Means t-Test Continued Reading to be done by the next class: No New Reading Homework to be done by the next class: TBA

Friday, November 14th: Preparing for Exam 3

Monday, November 17th: Exam 3

Wednesday, November 19th: Introducing ANOVA Reading to be done by the next class: Chapter 10 Homework to be done by the next class: TBA 9

Friday, November 21st: ANOVA Continued Reading to be done by the next class: No New Reading Homework to be done by the next class: TBA

Monday, November 24th: The Protected t-Test Reading to be done by the next class: Chapter 3, Pages 66-87 Homework to be done by the next class: TBA

Wednesday, November 26th: Correlation and Causality Reading to be done by the next class: No New Reading Homework to be done by the next class: TBA

Friday, November 28th: No Class – Thanksgiving

Monday, December 1st: Calculating and Interpreting a Correlation Reading to be done by the next class: Chapter 3, Pages 66-87 again Homework to be done by the next class: TBA

Wednesday, December 3rd: Preparing for Exam 4

Friday, December 5th: Exam 4

Monday, December 8th: R2 and Explained Variance Reading to be done by the next class: Chapter 3, Pages 92-95 Homework to be done by the next class: TBA

Wednesday, December 10th: Preparing for the Final

Friday, December 19th: Final – From 8 to 10AM!