Stat 1040, Section 006, Study Guide for Midterm 1 (Fall 2004)
Your first midterm exam is scheduled for Friday, October 8, 2004.
The exam is worth 200 points, i.e., 20% of your final grade.
A review session for Section 006 will be held
at the following place and time:
- Thursday 10/7/2004, 5-7pm, Business 209.
The first midterm will cover material from Chapters 1 through 10
of the Freedman, Pisani, and Purves book. To better prepare you
for the joint final, the first midterm will contain at least
one question from previous midterms or joint finals (as featured
in the Stat 1040 workbook or Web page), a review question, and a new
question. However, just memorizing the answers from the Stat 1040
workbook (for the old exams or for the review questions)
is not sufficient since numbers in the questions will
be changed (while the principle of the question remains unchanged).
Overall, there will be 4 to 6 questions in this exam.
You will be given about 50 minutes to complete the exam. The exam
will be a closed-book exam, which means that you are not allowed to
use the textbook or the lecture notes. All required tables (such
as for the normal curve) will be provided and required
formulas will be listed on the exam. You should bring your
calculator!
To prepare for the exam, you should solve old exam questions,
review questions, and regular exercises from the textbook.
During the review session, it is
planned to discuss selected exercises from old exams.
Make sure that you are familiar with the keywords and concepts
listed below.
- Chapter 1 - Controlled Experiments:
randomized controlled experiment,
placebo, double blind, treatment group, control group,
treatment, response, historical controls
- Chapter 2 - Observational Studies:
association, causation,
confounding, controlling a confounding factor
- Chapter 3 - The Histogram:
drawing a histogram, comparing
areas of a histogram, density scale
- Chapter 4 - The Average and the Standard Deviation:
calculating average (mean), standard deviation (SD), median, and
interquartile range; effect of long tails on average,
68%-95%-99.7% rule, cross-sectional and longitudinal studies
- Chapter 5 - The Normal Approximation for Data:
normal curve, standard units,
finding area under the curve, normal approximation
for data, percentiles (and normal curve), change of scale
- Chapter 6 - Measurement Error:
chance error, outliers (and their treatment), bias (systematic error)
- Chapter 7 - Plotting Points and Lines:
[no direct question will be asked in the midterm -
however, knowledge of this chapter is required
for Chapters 8 through 10]
slope, rise, run, (y-) intercept, algebraic equation for a line,
plotting lines
- Chapter 8 - Correlation:
scatterplot (scatter diagram),
independent (explanatory) and dependent (response)
variables, correlation coefficient r,
computing r, guessing r, SD line, linear association,
strong/medium/weak positive/negative/no association,
perfect correlation
- Chapter 9 - More about Correlation:
features of r, linear association vs. association in
general (effect of non-linear association and outliers on r),
association vs. causation, ecological correlation
- Chapter 10 - Regression:
regression line, constructing the regression line
(based on SD line and r), prediction, regression
effect, regression fallacy, two regression lines
Note that even if a keyword is only listed once, it may be related
to more than one chapter (e.g., confounding or SD).