Math 344
Probability and Statistics
Spring 2006

Course Home Page

[Calendar] [Homework] [3:16] R-project.org] [From Class] [Test Info]

Course Description

Instructor
Randall Pruim
office: North Hall 284
phone: (616) 526-7113
E-mail: rpruim@calvin.edu

Time & Location
Section A Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday 10:30-11:20, in North Hall 261

Office Hours
My schedule is still being determined, but it looks like I will usually be available right after class. Feel free to catch me after class, send email, or just stop by to see when I am available.

Internet Resources

Email
I will maintain an email list of all students registered in this class and will occasionally use it to distribute information and reminders of various things pertaining to this course. If you prefer to read your email from an account other than your calvin student account and do not have it set up to forward automatically, send me email with the email address you prefer.

Please check your email daily. You are responsible for any information communicated via email.

Web Pages
In addition to this home page, I will also maintain a list of web resources pertaining to this course. You are responsible for any information appearing on the course web pages. Items I have prepared and maintain online include

For quick access to these and other resources, see the navigation bar at the top of this page.

Other Important Information

See me
If you are having difficulty with any portion of the course, do not hesitate to see me. Do this as soon as possible, certainly well in advance of any deadlines (like tests) so that we can work to fix the problem.

Textbook
The required texts for this course are The first of these is the same book we used for Math 343. The latter book is available in paper back for about $15 and should be in the bookstore sometime the first week of classes.

Grading
Grading will be based on the following approximate weighting:
10% Homework, etc.
60% 3 Tests (see calendar for tentative dates)
30% Final Exam (Monday, May 15, @ 1:30pm)

Tests should be taken when they are scheduled. I do not generally offer make-up, alternate or late tests. Instead, if you miss one test (for any reason) or if your final exam score is better than your worst test, then your final exam score will be substituted for that test.

Technology
When we need a statistics package in this course to ease our calculations or visualizations, we will use is a program called R. R is a very powerful statistical tool and programming language and is being actively developed by statisticians from all over the world who contribute to the main program, its interface, or the many add-on modules (called packages) that are available to handle specialized tasks. R is free and available for Mac, PC, or Linux. It has also been installed on the computers in the Mathematics and Statistics Computer Lab (basement of North Hall) and on some other machines around campus (CS lab and Engineering lab, I think). We may also make ocassional use of Mathematica.

We will make much more use of R in 344 than we did in 343, and I encourage you to install it on your own machine if you have one. I will often post R source code for examples done in class so you can see how I get R to do things. R will be required for some of the assignments this semester.

Special Circumstances
Occasionally there are special circumstances that require that the rules and guidelines above be adjusted for a particular student. In such cases, it is the responsibility of the student to inform me of the situation as soon as possible, so that the appropriate arrangements can be made. This includes, but is not limited to, students with documented disabilities.

This page maintained by:
Randall Pruim
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Calvin College
rpruim@calvin.edu

Last Modified: Monday, 30-Jan-2006 14:46:59 EST