BCS 200: Syllabus

Fall 2010

Time & Location

Tuesdays and Thursdays: 3:25 – 4:40 PM
Dewey 1-101

Personnel

David Knill (Instructor)
E-mail:
Office Hours: Thursday, 1:00 - 2:00, Meliora 232 (and by appointment)

Alex Fine (TA)
E-mail:
Ting Qian (TA)
E-mail:

Class Website

BCS 200 uses the university electronic blackboard system. It will include postings of handouts, addendums to homework assignments, homework keys, class notes, etc.

Supplies Needed

A calculator. Functions for calculating sums, means and standard deviations would be very useful but not absolutely necessary.

Course Requirements

Homework: Actively solving problems, working through calculations and reasoning about experimental data is essential to learning statistics. Homework is therefore a central component of the class. I will assign homework using WebWork on a weekly basis (except exam weeks). WebWork is a web-based homework system that allows you to enter answers on the web, check them with the computer and retry problems you've gotten wrong. You can submit them at any point – presumably once they are correct. The homeworks are automatically graded. Many problems will involve some calculation. You can use a calculator or a computer program like Excel to help solve the problems.

Group work: We encourage you to work together on the homework. The problems assigned on WebWork are individualized, so you cannot simply copy someone else's solutions; however, they are of the same form for all students, so you can work together problem solving strategies. Occasionally, we will hand out some problems for homework. It is important that you do these to be prepared for the quizzes and exams; however, we will grade them entirely on effort – you will get a 1 if you worked a problem all the way through and a 0 otherwise. You may work in groups on these problems; however, you should make an effort to solve all of the problems when working in the group. The best way to work in a group is to discuss the logic of how to solve (or answer) a problem as a group, but then to carry out the calculations yourself. You can use the group to check your results for each step of a calculation. Your answer should be your own (even if worked out with the group) and when word answers are required should be in your own words. Simply copying answers from another student will be treated as plagiarism.

Due Date: Homework will be due at the beginning of class on the day listed on the syllabus. NO HOMEWORK WILL BE ACCEPTED AFTER THIS POINT. Access to homework assignments on WebWork will be turned off at the beginning of class time on the days they are due.

Grading: You will receive credit for problems solved correctly in WebWork and for each problem that you complete of the ones handed out. All homeworks will count equally toward your final grade.

Mini-quizzes: On nine days during the term (when homework's are due), you will be given a 15 minute quiz on the material covered in the homework due that day. Multiple choice and true / false questions will be graded on a 0-1 scale. Short-answer questions will be graded on a 0-2 scale (0 – wrong, 1 – partially correct, 2 – correct). Problems will be graded on the same 0 – 2 scale. I will drop the lowest of your quiz grades for purposes of calculating your final grade.

Exams: Three exams will be given during the term. The last exam will be given on the last day of classes and will only cover the material covered after the second exam.

Workshops

A voluntary homework workshop will be held during the week (time TBA). The workshop will be led by the TAs who will act as facilitators of group work on homeworks. The TAs role in the workshops is to help organize group work, to help with questions that groups have about homework problems and to explain concepts related to the homework. The workshop is meant to facilitate active learning of the course material through interactive solutions of homework problems with other students. These are not recitation sections in which the TAs go over the solutions to homework problems.

Lab

You are also enrolled in a lab associated with the course. The lab is listed as a separate, 1-credit hour course. It is taught by Katie Carbary. The labs are coordinated with the material being taught in the class, but are otherwise run independently. Questions about the lab should be addressed to the lab instructor.

Grading: The lab instructor will handle all grading for the lab. The grade that you receive for the lab will be factored in with your exam and homework grades in a final grade that will be given to you for both the class and the lab; that is, you will receive one final grade for both the lab and the class.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The course TAs are not involved with the lab and will not be able to answer questions or provide help with the lab.

Course grading

Quizzes – 20%
Exams – 40%
Labs – 25%
Homework – 15%

Quiz and exam Policy

Make-up exams or quizzes will be given only for illness or family emergencies. Medical excuses must be accompanied by a letter from your physician. If other compelling personal reasons exist for you to miss an exam (e.g., travel for university functions), you must give me advance notice and make arrangements to take the exam at another time. Failure to do so will result in receiving no credit for the exam. NO EXCEPTIONS WILL BE MADE TO THESE RULES.

Academic Honesty

Cheating in any form will not be tolerated. University policy on academic dishonesty may be found at http://www.rochester.edu/College/honesty/. If I suspect cheating on a homework or exam, I will arrange for a confidential meeting with the student or students involved. Depending on the evidence and seriousness of the offense, we may then dismiss the case as a misunderstanding, we may agree that a violation of the honesty code was committed and agree on an appropriate penalty or we may direct the case to the Academic Honesty Board.

While you are allowed to work collaboratively on homework, this collaboration should be focused on conceptual and logical approaches to problems. You are expected to work through the details of problems on your own and to turn in answers that are your own (though you may check them with other students). Simply copying someone else's answers is not appropriate and will be considered plagiarism. To be quite clear on this, it is not appropriate to work through the details of a problem's solution with another student (e.g. on a whiteboard) and then to both copy the solution to their homework sheets to be turned in.

Readings

Main Text: Understanding Statistics in the Behavioral sciences, 9th edition, by Robert R. Pagano, Thomson Wadsworth (Available in the bookstore)

Supplementary Readings: Handed out in class

Help policy

Both the TA's and myself are available for help on your homeworks and with any questions you have about material in the class. In order to manage the TAs' workloads and to make the process efficient, you should meet with the TAs in person to get help. E-mail is a very inefficient means for explaining concepts and can be the source of many miscommunications. For this reason, and because the TAs, like all of us, have to schedule their time to work on other things (e.g. research), last minute questions over e-mail about homework will not, in general, be answered.

You should have made an effort to work on the problems on your own before approaching a TA for help. The TAs and myself will have weekly office hours and will be available to meet by appointment.

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