252key 5/08/08 (For doc. version use http://courses.wcupa.edu/rbove/eco252/252key.doc.)
Welcome to the Eco252 Web Page
This is a web page in progress. The
page contains links to the course syllabus, course outline with homework
assignments, computer problems, and annotated outline. It will contain old
exams and problem solutions after they are discussed in class. For future use
bookmark this page.
My hard drive is regularly checked for
viruses. If you get a virus report, please give me the document number and I
will reboot it.
My
standing offer: If you submit a good exam
problem to me, you might just find it on the exam. The better thought out it
is, the more likely it is to go on the exam with minimal changes. However,
since there are 2-4 Statistics exams, the numbers are likely to be changed. A
number of students have submitted questions in the past and, I believe, gotten
better grades because of it.
My new standing offer: Work to improve the course, if it is used, will be
rewarded by adding extra credit points to grades on graded homework. This
includes, but is not limited to: 1) The first person to notice an error on any
posted document except, maybe, exams; 2) help to improve course graphics and 3)
valuable ideas for new documents or problems.
Notices ---- Office hours for current weeks are several pages below.
You should always be sure that
you have a copy of the current outline pages to bring to class. You should know
how to access Blackboard.
http://courses.wcupa.edu/rbove/entering_blackboard_for_the_first_time.doc.
You can enter this website through Blackboard.
In addition to the prerequisites you are expected to be
able to express yourself in writing. All
e-mails to the instructor should be in grammatically correct but not
terribly formal English with the spelling checked! Note the following
rules!
1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences
with.
3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid clichés like the plague. (They're old
hat.)
6. Be more or less specific.
7. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are
(usually) unnecessary.
8. Also too, never, ever use repetitive
redundancies.
9. No sentence fragments.
10.
Don't use no double negatives.
11.
Proofread carefully to see if you any words out or mispeld something.
12.
Eschew obfuscation.
13. i
get very angry if you Don’t capitalize correctly.
14.
Pronouns should be put in the correct case, and the passive voice should be
avoided by you and I.
15. I
were very happy if you would have learned the difference between the
subjunctive and the conditional.
16. Be
fermiliar with the spelling and pronunciation of words like higharchy.
17. Its
very annoying if you don’t know when ‘its’ needs it’s apostrophe.
18. Writing carefully, dangling
participles must be avoided.
Do you
know the difference between ‘you and I’ and ‘you and me,’ ‘fortuitous’ and
‘fortunate,’ ‘enormousness’ and ‘enormity,’ ‘lay’ and ‘lie,’ ‘reticent’ and
‘reluctant,’ ‘mischievous’ and ‘mischeevious?’ Most students and too many faculty and
newspaper editors don’t. ‘mischeevious’ is not a real word, but I have been
hearing ‘mischievous’ pronounced that way too often.
From the Tutoring Center:
How
to sign up for a tutor
- Come to 105
- You may sign up for up to three different courses.
Make sure you give us the course name, course number, and your section
number.
- If our tutors are booked, you will be placed on a
waiting list. We will contact you as soon as a space becomes
available.
- Remember, tutors are assigned on a first come,
first serve basis. If you anticipate a problem in a given subject, sign up
early -- crisis tutoring does not work.
- The LARC cannot schedule more than one tutoring
session per class, per week. Exceptions are reviewed on a case by case
basis.
- If you have a learning disability or require
individualized tutoring, let us know right away. We will try to
accommodate your needs as much as possible.
May Notices
May 8 –
Grades will not be complete until Tuesday of next week and I will not be in the
office. If you wish to know your exam and term grade, you may e-mail me. Final
exams will be available for checking during the first term of summer school.
May 2 –
Please remember that the take-home was due this week. Note that I will allow
you to start the final exam early. I do not expect to be on campus regularly
for several weeks after Wednesday,
If you
are getting or negotiating a ‘No grade’ and intend to make it up rather than
retake the course, it must be finished before I leave WCU in early August. The
solution to last year’s final is at 252y0781. But you could probably benefit from studying second, third and
final exams in OLD EXAMS
References
copied from below.
OUTLINE and Lecture Summary OUTLINE for use by instructor in class.
TERMS NOT
EXPLAINED ELSEWHERE.
HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS PROBLEM SOLUTIONS
SYLLABUS SUPPLEMENT EXCERPTS also see SYLLABUS SUPPLEMENT CONTENTS. This is
most of the contents of Supplementary
Materials & Tables for ECO 251 & 252, which is available from
Dynamic Student Services,
ACADEMIC
DISHONESTY STATEMENT – See syllabus for current version.
Minitab
purchase/rental/trial information appears under Minitab Options at the end of this document.
April Notices
April
30 – Note that I will allow you to start the final exam early. Also please note
changes in office hours for Thursday and Friday of this week.
April
25 – In the take-home, question 2f, ‘works’ should read ‘weeks.’
April
24 – Note that there was an error in n in the regression problem on the take-home.
n = 11. I’m amazed that no one saw it because you get unreasonable answers if
you use 10. If you need extra time to deal with this, please take it. Note that I will not be on campus
on Monday.
April
18 - The Solution
to Graded Assignment 4 is now available. The last (4th)
computer problem is also available. Last year’s Final is available in OLD EXAMS. There seems to be a second
version of part of it there. I will try to figure out why it was there next
week.
April
11 – The solutions to the first and second exams are available in OLD EXAMS. Here is the take-home
section of the next exam.
April 8 – All problem solutions have been posted in PROBLEM SOLUTIONS.
April 5 - Graded Assignment
4 will be due on Monday, April 14. Make
sure that you keep a copy of it to compare with the posted solution. There is
no guarantee that it will be returned before the next exam. Solutions to
Section F and G are in PROBLEM SOLUTIONS.
References
copied from below.
OUTLINE and Lecture Summary OUTLINE for use by instructor in class.
TERMS NOT
EXPLAINED ELSEWHERE.
HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS PROBLEM SOLUTIONS
SYLLABUS SUPPLEMENT EXCERPTS also see SYLLABUS SUPPLEMENT CONTENTS. This is
most of the contents of Supplementary
Materials & Tables for ECO 251 & 252, which is available from
Dynamic Student Services,
ACADEMIC
DISHONESTY STATEMENT – See syllabus for current version.
Minitab
purchase/rental/trial information appears under Minitab Options at the end of this document.
March Notices
March 24 - The Solution to
Graded Assignment 3 is
now available.
Mar 21 – Please avoid leaving assignments under doors!
There is an envelope on my door that I always check before doing grading and I
have a box in the department office. Also – please make copies of everything you
hand in to me. Though relatively little gets lost, one lost paper is bad
enough!
March 20 – I was wrong. Next week’s exam will include all
of Section E. Solutions to all of Section E will be posted tomorrow. Here is the take-home
section of next week’s exam.
March 19 - Note that
there was extra credit on Graded Assignment 3 and that some of you may
have gotten extraneous material on this assignment that duplicates Problem D8,
a problem you should have worked on before doing graded assignment 2. The
version posted on March 7 was correct. Should I warn you that, if you do the
extra credit, you could find the problem you propose on the exam. The solution
to the last exam will be posted later today.
March 7 – Graded Assignment
3 has been revised. The major change is the addition of a substantial extra
credit problem.
March 5 – Graded Assignment
3 will be due on Thursday, March 20.You should be working on the remainder
of problems in Section D. Solutions to D and part of E are in PROBLEM SOLUTIONS.
March 3 – Computer Assignment 1 is due as a part of the
next exam. If you missed today’s session, these assignments are in 252cprb. You are responsible for knowing what
was tested and what the results were. Examples are given in 252
meanx3 and 252meanx5.
February Notices
Feb 29
– The only day I was able to schedule for computer sessions was Monday Mar 3.
10AM in A002, 11am in A025.
Feb 27
– It is time begin the homework problems on comparison of two sample means.
Solutions are in PROBLEM SOLUTIONS. Make a
Diagram has been rewritten to help you with one-sample and two-sample tests
for means, proportions and variances.
Feb 26
– I have just posted a document called Make a Diagram,
which may be useful on tomorrow’s exam.
Feb 25
- I have just posted Graded Assignment
3. No due date has been set.
Feb 24
– It seems like I made
a fatal error in Grass2. Question 3b) should have read ‘Assume once again that
0.4 is a sample standard deviation.’
As the problem read the answer is the same as Problem 2. This error seems to
have carried through to 3c) too. Obviously if you didn’t say or imply that this
was the same as for 2), you made a mistake. The posted assignment and solution
have been corrected.
Feb 23
- The Solution
to Graded Assignment 2
is now available
Feb 22
– Part h of Problem 3 in the take-home should read as below.
f) (Extra credit) Remember that the method that you have been using to deal with proportions substitutes the Normal distribution for the binomial distribution. In general the p-values that you have computed are lower than you would get if you used the binomial distribution. Verify this by making a continuity correction as described in the outline and repeating your test in c). (2)
Feb 21
– In problem 2 of the take-home you may use a 1% significance level if you feel
that it will make the problem easier. There will be more credit for 98%.
Feb 20
– A first set of corrections has been applied to the take-home. Some lines in
Problem 2 were lettered wrong.
Feb 20
– The
take-home section of next week’s exam is now available. It should be handed
in inside the in-class part of the exam. Check these notices daily in case of
errors in the take-home.
Feb 19
– From Dr. Benzing on calculators. HP10BII i.e., HP10B2 (the last number is the
Roman numeral 2) is used by all finance majors and recommended for
all FIN325 students.
Feb 19
– A corrected version of Graded Assignment
2 has been posted. Corrections are not critical.
Feb 15 –
The Solution
to Graded Assignment 1
is now available.
Feb 13
– Solutions to all problems in sections B and C have been posted in PROBLEM SOLUTIONS. You should have done or be doing all problems from B1
through B6 in HOMEWORK
ASSIGNMENTS. Graded Assignment
2 is due on Wednesday Feb 20.
Feb 8 –
If you have forgotten how to compute a sample variance read 252oneaex5.
Feb 7 –
I have just posted Graded Assignment
2. No due date has been set.
Feb 6 –
I have just posted a revised version of 252doctor. The main change is in the first paragraph – ‘She knows that the number of sick days taken will be
increased by a respiratory illness and that similar workers nationally take an
average of 1.5 sick days a month and that, nationally, the standard deviation
is 0.8.’
Feb 5 –
The National Association of Black Accountants has a meeting on Feb 7 at
5:30-6:30pm in A305. The topic is ‘Do’s and Don’ts of the Interview process.
Bring your resume. Everyone is welcome!
The
outline for Section B will be distributed in class.
Feb 4 -
Graded
Assignment 1 is due on
Monday Feb 11.
Feb 1 –
It is time to do the homework problems on confidence intervals for the
proportion and standard deviation. Solutions are in PROBLEM SOLUTIONS.
January Notices
Jan 31
– It is time to do the homework problems on confidence intervals for the mean.
Solutions are in PROBLEM SOLUTIONS.
The
National Association of Black Accountants has its ‘Welcome Back Social’ tonight
at 5:30-6:30pm in A303 with games, pizza and soda. Everyone is welcome!
Jan 22
– By now you should be ready to discuss Problem A1. The solution is posted in PROBLEM SOLUTIONS.
Jan 17
- Graded
Assignment 1 is now
available. No due date has been set. I have not worked through the solution
yet, so keep yourself posted on changes by regularly checking the notices.
Jan 16
- The letter below came from the tutoring center. The current list of tutors is
posted above.
"The LARC is
welcoming students for registration for the Spring 2008! Please let your
students know we have tutors available for most 100- and 200-level gen. ed. courses. We
will also offer Praxis review sessions and the Academic Success Workshop.
Have a wonderful Spring!"
Thank you!
Gerardina L. Kenney
Interim Director
Learning Assistance and
610-738-0496
gkenney@wcupa.edu
Jan 16
– I have run out of HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS. The document is available on the courses server. Don’t
forget to turn in the Academic Dishonesty statement.
Jan 9 –
For class schedule, see below. On the first day of class, I will hand out the
following Documents: SYLLABUS, HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS
and the documents from the OUTLINE and Lecture Summary that are listed in 252oneaCover2.
There will be a revised academic dishonesty statement that must be signed and
returned to me.
Jan 8 – I am posting my schedule
for the spring below. Actual office hours during each week will be posted on
the next page.
Every year a significant minority of Students taking
Economics 251 and 252 receive a grade of C- or lower. Almost all of these
students are required by the Business program to receive a C or better in the
course. When this requirement was imposed, I asked the faculty if I should now
be giving C’s to the people who would have earned a C- before the requirement
was imposed and was told that I should not. Almost all the people who received
a grade of C- or lower for the course received a grade of D+ or lower on the
final exam, this was a score of 18 out of a nominal 75 on the exam.
Every year students who received grades of C- or ask
me if there is some way they can make up the grade. Unfortunately this is
impractical and defeats the purpose of a grading system. Almost all of these
people will tell me that they worked hard and attended all of my classes. Good
intentions, however, are no substitute for being able to show me that they
learned something. I, therefore, must say no to requests to do something to
make up the grade. It just doesn’t seem reasonable to believe that people who learned
relatively little during the term are going to suddenly understand statistics
or that I could offer this opportunity to everyone who did not get a C. I,
honestly, have no idea how anyone can make up this grade in the few weeks
before the start of the next term.
SPRING
SCHEDULE
OFFICE HOURS: These hours may conflict with faculty meetings,
doctors’ appointments etc.. Check the weekly
schedule below before coming in.
M noon-2 PM
T 3:15-5 PM
W noon-2 PM
R 3:15-5 PM
I am also usually available after classes, after office
hours and Friday afternoons. You are
encouraged to come in at your convenience without appointment (Call in advance
to be sure that I am in). If you don’t understand what is going on in class, please come to my office
CLASS SCHEDULE:
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