Math 160

Fall 2011

Exam 1 Review

Disclaimer: I have attempted to be comprehensive in the following, but important items may have been omitted by mistake. If you see such an omission, please let me know, but you are responsible for all of the lecture material to date.

The first hour exam for Math 160 will be held on Friday, September 30 and will cover Chapters 1 and 2.  In particular, be prepared to:

• Know basic definitions (including, but not limited to, individuals/cases, variables (categorical and quantitative), means, medians, quartiles, IQR, outliers, variance, standard deviation, lurking variables, etc.).  Please be able to give clear and precise definitions of all the terms we have seen in the material covered.  As mentioned above, although you are responsible for all terms defined in class, the end-of-section summaries remind us of most (if not all) of them.
• Be able to construct by hand stemplots (including back-to-back stemplots, histograms, boxplots and bar graphs.
• Be able to find (by hand) medians, quartiles, IQR, and the rest of the five number summary.  Be able to apply the rule for finding outliers.
• Be able to calculate mean, variance, and standard deviation.  You may use a calculator for this sort of question, but (on this exam) only for doing calculations (i.e., you are not to use the statistical functions of a statistical calculator, though you may bring this calculator to class)..
• Be able to transform means and standard deviations under a change of units (linear transformations)
• Be able to say what a density curve is, and what mean and median mean for density curves
• Be able to say what a normal distribution is and why it is important (including the 68-95-99.7 rule).  Be able to calculate z-scores (calculators may be used).
• Be able to use table A (a copy of table A will be provided).
• Be able to say what scatterplots, response and explanatory variables are.
• Be able to give the formulas for r, r^2 and say what they mean.  You will not be asked to calculate r.
• Be able to answer questions on linear regression, say what the linear regression line tells us, and be able to calculate the y-intercept and slope of a regression line given the appropriate values for the correlation coefficient and averages and standard deviations.  Be able to describe some of the concerns that arise in using linear regression.
• Be able to calculate marginal and conditional distributions in a two-way table
• A history question:  Be able to give brief descriptions of the work of John Graunt, Gauss, and Pearson as their work relates to the material in the course so far.
• Be able generally to solve problems such as appear in the homework assignments, including problems in the current homework assignment (assignment #3).  There will be some basic questions on linear regression not yet covered in homework.
• In exam questions in which a calculator may be used, please work the problem out in enough detail that I can follow what you are doing.  The step before you calculate should be an expression that needs only to be punched into a calculator to get the answer.  This final expression will be sufficient for questions on this exam except as noted.

An important note:  The end-of-section summaries are particularly useful in identifying the major topics of each section and the major terms defined in each section.  I make use of these summaries in helping to construct exams.