STA 113 -- STATISTICS FOR ENGINEERS
Instructors:
Information on Statistics help sessions
ps file,
pdf file
Text
Probability and Statistics for Engineering and the Sciences
(Fifth edition)
by Jay L. Devore
Duxbury, Thomson Learning
About the course: the course is an introduction to
statistical reasoning, and includes a review of the necessary elements
of probability theory. Applications in various branches of engineering
will be discussed. Understanding of each of the topics relies on the
material preceding it: it is important to master each topic as soon as
it is covered.
Quizzes
On most Fridays, during the lab sections, quizzes on the material
covered in class will be given. Most topics we will discuss
are very closely related, hence quizzes might be cumulative
although emphasis will always be placed on the most recently covered
material. They will
typically consist of 2 problems one standard and one a bit more
challenging. You'll have 20 to 30 minutes to finish the
problems.
Quizzes are open-notes but closed-book . You may
use a standard calculator (which computes exponentials, logarithms,
powers ...).
Liang and Xia will be discussing, among other things, solutions to
quiz and homework problems in the remaining time of the labs.
Quizzes should prove very useful for exams
and to evaluate your progress throughout the semester. See the
grading page for details on the
grading policy for quizzes.
Homework
Problem sets will be assigned weekly (either on Thursday
during the lecture or on Friday during the lab sections) and will
be due the next Friday at the beginning of the lab sections.
Homework assignments will also be posted on the course webpage.
See the
grading page for details on
the grading policy for homeworks.
We will ask you to work on homeworks in groups of 2-4 students each.
See Group work rules for a few
comments and rules about group work on the homeworks. Note that
discussion and interpretation of your results is the most important
part of homework problems (especially data analysis
problems). MINITAB output (with brief comments) is not
considered a complete homework and will not receive full credit.
Clearly indicate on top of the first page of each homework assignment:
Homework number
Name and section number for each group member
Homeworks without this information will not be graded.
Homework assignments
Exams
Exams (midterms and final exam) are in-class, closed-book,
closed-notes. Up to 2 formula sheets are allowed. You should also have a
standard calculator. Refer to the
grading page for more on
the grading policy for exams.
Grading
Exams, quizzes and homeworks will be weighted by the following percentages:
- Homework 10%
- Quizzes 20%
- First midterm 20% (Thursday, February 14)
- Second midterm 20% (Tuesday, March 26)
- Final Exam 30% (Tuesday, April 30, 2-5 pm)
For more details (e.g., letter grades)
see the grading page.
Computing
In Peter Mueller's STA 113 homepage from previous semesters you will
find a self-guided
Introduction to using MINITAB
for descriptive statistics and simple statistical
analyses. The windows version of MINITAB (available from the campus PC
clusters) is much more user-friendly and the one suggested for use.
Honor Code
Cheating on quizzes or exams, plagiarism on homeworks and other
forms of academic dishonesty are violations of the Duke Honor Code and
will be referred to the Duke Undergraduate Judicial Board.
Interested in a
Statistics graduate program ?
thanos@stat.duke.edu
Last updated 4/25/02
Go to
the Duke Statistics home page