MTH395 Fall 2014 Home Page

Class Schedule:T,Th 10:00-11:15 Coda Image
Class Location:Duffy 207
Professor:Dr. Eugene Quinn
email: equinn1@stonehill.edu
My schedule and office hours:Fall2014

General Information Announcements Syllabus Notes and Handouts Assignments Software Policies Grading


Announcements

8/28/2014 Stonehill College is committed to providing all students equal access to learning opportunities. The Center for Academic Achievement is the campus office that works with students who have disabilities to provide and/or arrange reasonable accommodations. Students registered with The Center, who have a letter requesting accommodations, are encouraged to contact the instructor early in the semester. Students who have, or think they may have, a disability (e.g. psychiatric, attentional, learning, vision, hearing, physical, or systemic), are invited to contact The Center for Academic Achievement for a confidential discussion at 508-565-1208.


MTH395-A General Information


Textbook: Mathematical Statistics with Applications by Wackerly, Mendenhall, and Scheaffer (ISBN 0-495-11081-1)
MTH395 will consist of selected material from the first seven chapters of the text.

Optionally, students interested in preparing for the first actuarial exam (Exam P1) are encouraged to purchase the ACTEX study guide by Samuel Broverman as a supplementary text. The syllabus for Exam P1 is nearly identical to that of MTH395, but the study guide provides additional practice problems tailored specifically to the exam.

Assignments and Projects

Assignment NumberDate DueAssignment


Notes and Handouts

DateDescription




Software

Modern statistical analysis is computer intensive. The following software will be used in this class.

We will have an install-a-thon on the first day class meets, so be sure to bring your computer.

There are some dependencies among the programs listed, so try to install them in the following order:

ItemDescriptionLinks
LaTeX
(pronounced "la-tech")
LaTeX is the gold standard for typesetting documents containing scientific and math notation.
We will use LaTeX in conjunction with the Sweave R package to produce composite documents.
My LaTeX page.
Mac users should install MacTex, windows users should install MikTex.
JAGS ("Just Another Gibbs Sampler")A package for performing Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulationmcmc-jags.sourceforge.net
The R statistical computing systemOpen-source statistical computing system.
R currently has over 5,000 packages and tends to be the place cutting-edge techniques show up first.
Instructions for downloading and installing the R statistical computing environment (for windows, but Mac is similar).
RstudioIntegrated development environment (IDE) for Rwww.rstudio.com
The rjags R packagerjags provides an interface to JAGS from within ROnce you have R working, enter the following command: install.packages("rjags") then choose a mirror site (any one will do) to download this package. R and JAGS must be already installed.
PythonPython has become the "Swiss Army Knife" of data extraction and manipulation, combining ease of use and power.Anaconda is a free PYTHON distribution tailored for large-scale data analysis.
IPythonAn IDE for Python.IPython provides an architecture for interactive computing with Python.
SASThe SAS systemSAS is a large commercial software package that is very widely used for data analysis. SAS makes their system available to students and faculty for the duration of a course. You will need to register with SAS and indicate that you are enrolled in this course. Detailed instructions for registering can be found here. We will be using their web client, so no software needs to be installed on your computer.
GitHubA collaborative source management toolGitHub is becoming very popular as the repository for computational details on publications containing complicated statistical analyses.




Grading


Grades will be based on a midterm exam, a cumulative final exam, and assignments.

The relative weight of each will be as follows:

Assignments and Projects50%
Midterm Exam15%
Final Exam35%






Policies


College Policies

All policies listed in the Academic Policies and Procedures section of The Hill Book will be strictly adhered to.

These include:

Additional Instructor's Policies



Back to Dr. Quinn's home page
Back to Stonehill Math Department web page
Back to Stonehill main page