DeBartolo 209

M,W,F 9:35-10:25

Professor Dan Myers

Office: 735 Flanner Hall, 631-3839

Office Hours: MW 10:45-11:45 or by appointment

Web Page for this course: http://www.nd.edu/~dmyers/courses/303sp99/

Purpose of the Course:

This course will introduce you to statistical techniques commonly used in the social sciences. No particular mathematical or statistical background is required for this course. If you can add, subtract, multiply, and divide, you are prepared. This course will also emphasize using the computer to perform statistical analyses although you will also be expected to be able to compute simple problems by hand.

Required Texts:

1. Blalock, Hubert M. 1979. Social Statistics (Revised 2^nd Edition). McGraw-Hill.

2. Anagnoson, J. Theodore and Richard E. DeLeon. 1996. StataQuest 4. Duxbury Press.

Course Requirements:

Grade Scale: A: 93-100% A-: 90-92

 Week of Jan. 11 Introduction, Theory, and Levels of Measurement

Blalock, Ch. 1 & 2.

A & D, Ch. 1, 3 Optional: Ch. 2

 II. DESCRIBING DATA

Blalock, Ch. 3 & 4

A & D, Ch. 4 - 9

 Week of Jan. 25 Central Tendency and Dispersion

Blalock, Ch. 5 & 6

Blalock, Ch. 7

Blalock, Ch. 8 & 9

Blalock, Ch. 11 & 12

A & D, Ch. 13 Optional: Ch. 15

Blalock, Ch. 13

A & D, Review Ch. 13

 Week of Mar. 15 Ordinal Scales and Non-Parametric Tests

Blalock, Ch. 14

A & D, Ch. 14

Blalock, Ch. 15

A & D, Review p. 72-78

Blalock, Ch. 16

A & D Ch. 20 through p. 287 only.

Blalock, Ch. 17 & 18

A & D, Ch. 16 & 17

Policies:

Office Hours: Please take advantage of my office hours to come in and discuss questions about class material or problems you having with the course. If you wish to meet with me but cannot during the regular times, please see me before or after one of the classes to arrange a suitable time.

Attendance: Although I expect you to attend all classes, I will not waste time taking attendance. I will not adjust grades on the basis of attendance: failing to attend regularly will be detrimental without such a policy.

Reading: Reading assignments are absolutely essential in this course. You must do the assigned reading prior to coming to class each time. I will make a lot more sense to you and will be able to help you much more if you have done the reading in advance. Most of you will find that understanding the material requires going over it more than once in some way--that is simply the nature of the beast when it comes to statistics. Particularly if you anticipate having trouble in this course you might consider reading the material more than once (is this guy nuts?) or even more extreme, actually taking notes as you read (yep, he's definitely lost it).

We will not cover all of either textbook. In Blalock, you will not need to read any of the sections that are preceded by an asterisk (*). I will give you specific instructions about what other sections to skip as we come to them in the course.

Academic Misconduct: Any suspected instance of cheating or plagiarism will be referred to the Honesty Committee. The course penalty for academic misconduct is a zero credit for the assignment and whatever disciplinary action is levied by the Honesty Committee/University. No opportunities to re-do assignments will be given. Two instances of academic misconduct will result in automatic failure of the course.

Exams: Missed exams cannot be made-up expect under extreme circumstances such as serious illness or a death in the family. The policies related to make-up exams are outlined in your Notre Dame student handbooks.

Projects and homework assignments are due at the start of the class on the due date. Because we will be going over homework assignments during the class period they are due, NO HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT MAY BE TURNED IN LATE! Projects received after the start of the class on Monday, April 26 will be considered late. Late projects are subject to a 10% penalty. No projects will be accepted after the start of class on Wednesday, April 28. Projects received after that time will receive zero credit. Exceptions to this policy will only be made in the case of serious illness or a death in the family and will require documentation as outlined in your student handbook.