Psychology 242: S T A T I S T I C S

Instructor

Gordon Bear. Office: G438. Office hours: MR 5:00 - 6:30. Telephone: 684-7754. E-Mail: gbear@ramapo.edu.

Goals of the Course

• To develop your understanding of the research designs and the statistical procedures most commonly employed in biology, medicine, psychology, and the other sciences.
• To teach you the skills needed to apply these procedures yourself.
• To increase your capacity and your propensity for critical thinking.

• G. Bear, Statistics: A Toolkit for Empiricists. Your professor’s own text, available in the campus book store, one third at a time, in three-ring binders. Price determined by the book store, which adds a certain mark-up to their costs; there are no author’s royalties.
• R. B. May, M. A. Hunter, & M. Masson, NPStat. A disk of software offering unique and important techniques for comparing two batches of scores. Available from your professor for a small fee to cover duplicating costs.

• Reading: Except when a test is scheduled, I will ask you to study one or more modules for each meeting of our course. The specific assignments for the entire term appear on our Calendar. Read the assignment for a given date before our meeting on that date.
• Homework: For most modules, I will invite you to do homework, which will be due on the day for which the module is assigned. If your homework is tardy, I will not accept it or grade it, and it will be your responsibility to obtain the correct answers from a classmate. Some homework will require a computer, and the dozens of computers on campus will be available to you.

I will assess your progress in meeting our goals by administering the tests listed on the Calendar for our course. Some will include problems to be solved. Complex formulas are essential for certain of the techniques we will cover, and I will supply any such formulas with the exam, so you need not to memorize them.

Your final grade will be based almost entirely on your performance on the examinations. If your performance puts you close to the cut-off for the next higher letter grade, I will determine the grade on the basis of your performance on the homework. In previous semesters, the homework has made a difference in the grade for about a sixth of the students.

I will not take attendance, and attendance will not directly influence your grade.

I do not grade on the curve, so there is no limit to the number of A's—or F's—that the class can earn. I will not drop your lowest (or any other) grade. I will not take account of your effort or whether your performance has improved during the course. You must pass the final exam to pass the course.

The Bugaboo of Mathematics

The only mathematics required for our course is simple arithmetic and basic algebra—which the course will review. Rather than proving theorems, we will develop our intuitions about how the numbers work. What makes this course difficult for some students is not the mathematics; it's their poor study habits.

Class Meetings

Our meetings will be devoted to lectures, demonstrations, exercises, and tests. They will also provide opportunities to review homework, practice computing skills, and discuss the modules. If you must miss a meeting, call me at 201 684-7754. I'll help you keep current with the class.

Advice

• At the very beginning of our course, plan a weekly schedule of studying that reserves at least 5 hours per week for this course—about an hour per day. Stick to the schedule.
• Keep up with the reading. Don't fall behind! This is definitely not a course in which you can successfully cram just before a test.
• Take full advantage of all opportunities available in the modules. Answer all questions in the margins; work all problems and exercises
• Do all the homework, and do it on time. Like the problems and exercises in the modules, the homework will give you a chance to rehearse and apply what you've learned and will thus help you consolidate your new knowledge. It may also boost your grade in our course.
• Find a classmate to study with. You and your study buddy should teach other the material. Each of you should put it in your own words, rephrasing it in different ways, to see if you can get the other to understand it. I never mastered statistics myself until I began teaching it to others.
• Buy your own copy of our text. Sharing the text would be foolish. To master this important, interesting subject of ours, you will need daily access to the book and freedom to annotate it.
• Attend every meeting of our course. Each will be an opportunity to ask questions and to hear the material in the modules presented in a different way. You may be tempted to cut the meeting immediately after an exam—but don't.
• Aim high! Strive to master 100% of the material. You CAN do it, and you'll feel great about it.

• If your mathematical skills are weak, the brief review of arithmetic and algebra that our course offers will probably not suffice. Even if you supplement our review by studying arithmetic and algebra on your own or by getting tutoring in these subjects, our course may still be too difficult for you.
• Ramapo's Division of Basic Studies provides tutoring for several mathematics courses, but not for this one. If you have relied on extensive tutoring to learn mathematics, you'll find this course too difficult.
• This course presumes that you possess college-level skills not only in mathematics but also in reading. To master our material and earn a good grade, you must do all the reading assignments and understand them in full.
• The subject matter of our course is too voluminous to be covered fully in our meetings. Through my homework assignments and my lectures I will do my best to help you identify the most important points and learn them, but we won't have enough time together to address everything that you should learn. I will, nonetheless, hold you responsible for all the material in all the assignments.
• I will not accept extra-credit work at the end of the semester. To earn a high grade, work steadily, submit all the homework, and prepare diligently for the examinations.
• Your tuition does not guarantee you a passing grade in this course (or in any other). What you get for your money is the opportunity to study statistics, a challenging task that requires about an hour of homework daily plus attendance at our meetings. To receive a passing grade, you must earn it by demonstrating your mastery of our subject matter.
• Once our course ends and I have reported your grade to the registrar, there will be no way to raise your mark (unless you discover an error in my records or computations, which I will post so you can check them).

The homework in this course serves important purposes:

• It affords you an opportunity to discover things for yourself.
• It offers you practice in recalling and applying what you’ve learned.
• It previews items on the examinations.
• It previews challenges that you may someday encounter in analyzing real data on your own.

Exception: All homework involving our statistical software, SPSS and NPStat, is required. You will not pass this course unless you make a good-faith effort to do those assignments and submit them all. The purpose of this policy is, of course, to encourage you to become familiar with the way statistics is now done: by computer.

Policy on Class Cancellations

If the college closes on a day for which an exam was planned, the exam will occur at the next meeting. If the college closes on a day for which no exam was planned, we will stay on the schedule printed on our Course Calendar. Whatever was scheduled for the next meeting, even if it is an exam, will occur. If homework was due on the day of the closing, it will be due at the next meeting, as will any homework already scheduled for that day. In sum, we will stay on schedule.

Policy on Decorum in the Classroom

Everyone in this class has the right to study statistics with me in an atmosphere free of distraction from the day’s lessons. Everyone therefore has a duty to maintain decorum and keep our classroom quiet and civil. A student who disrupts a meeting invites eviction by the campus police and discipline by the Dean of Students.

Special Needs

To arrange accommodations for a documented disability, speak with me privately. I’ll be glad to help you.

Smoking remains the most dangerous threat to public health in the United States today. Tobacco smoke contains thousands of chemicals, many of them poisonous, even carcinogenic. The list includes:
 

These poisons sicken and kill nonsmokers as well as smokers. The damage that smokers do to nonsmokers is sadly illustrated in the diseases of women: A husband who smokes raises the risk that his wife will develop lung cancer—even if she doesn't smoke—by about 30%. Nonsmokers forced to breathe tobacco fumes at home or at work are also at risk for asthma, pneumonia, and heart disease. So please remember: Smoking is not permitted anywhere in the G Building, lavatories and stairwells included.