MCS 142 Examination 1
- What: Examination on chapters 1-2, section 9.1, and topics covered in class
- When: 9:00-9:50/11:30-11:20 on Tuesday, September 30
- Where: Olin 320/Olin 317
Exam 1 will be a closed-book examination, but you will be allowed to use
one 3"-by-5" note card and your calculator.
The exam will focus on problems that check your understanding of statistics
rather than on questions testing your memory of course content.
The exam will cover:
- Looking at data--distributions
- Displaying distributions with graphs
- Describing distributions with numbers
- The normal distributions
- Looking at data--relationships
- Scatterplots
- Correlation
- Least-squares regression
- Cautions about regression and correlation
- The question of causation
- Two-way tables
Suggested study and preparation:
- Review the summaries at end of each section of the text.
Make sure that you know and understand the terminology of statistics
(bar graph, histogram, mean, standard deviation, five-number summary, correlation, density curve,
normal distribution, regression, etc.).
- Be prepared to demonstrate statistical thinking in context.
- Computation will not be a big part of the test, but
you should be able to compute and interpret five-number summaries, means,
standard deviations, and z-scores.
You should be able to interpret a least-squares regression equation
in context.
You should be able to calculate marginal and conditional distributions
from given two-way tables.
- You should be able to use Table A (standard normal probabilities).
- Be prepared to draw graphical displays: stemplots, bar graphs, histograms,
boxplots, timeplots, scatterplots, etc.