Stat 1040, Section 002, Study Guide for Midterm 2 (Spring 2009)

Your second midterm exam is scheduled for Friday, March 27, 2009. The exam is worth 200 points, i.e., 20% of your final grade.

A review session for Section 002 will be held at the following place and time:

Wednesday 3/25/2009, 5.00pm-6.30pm, BUS 209.
Note that quizzes, midterms, and final exams from the most recent semester can be found in the Stat 1040 workbook. Solutions for these quizzes and exams and additional quizzes and exams from earlier semesters can be found on the course Web site at http://www.math.usu.edu/~symanzik/teaching/2009_stat1040/stat1040.html.

The second midterm will cover material from Chapters 11 through 20 (except Chapter 15) of the Freedman, Pisani, and Purves book. Midterm questions may originate from various sources, such as questions from past midterms or past finals (as featured in the Stat 1040 workbook or course Web page), review exercise questions (assigned or non-assigned), past quizzes, regular chapter exercises - and new questions! The more questions (from various sources) you solve before the midterm, the better you will be prepared! However, just memorizing the answers from the Stat 1040 workbook or course Web page (for the old exams or for the review questions) is not sufficient since numbers in the questions may be changed (while the principle of the question remains unchanged). Overall, there will be 4 to 6 questions in this exam.

You will be given about 50 minutes to complete the exam. The exam will be a closed-book exam, which means that you are not allowed to use the textbook or the lecture notes. All required tables (such as for the normal curve) will be provided and required formulas will be listed on the exam. You should bring your calculator!

You will not be allowed to use your cell phone (either for phone calls, text messaging, or as a calculator) during the exam. Any violation of this policy will automatically result in a score of zero for this exam.

To prepare for the exam, you should solve old midterm and final questions, review exercise questions, questions from old quizzes, and regular exercises from the textbook. During the review session, it is planned to discuss selected exercises from old exams. Make sure that you are familiar with the keywords and concepts listed below.

Chapter 11 (omit Sections 11.4 and 11.5) - The R.M.S. Error for Regression:
error (residual), r.m.s. error (meaning and computation), residual plots (construction and interpretation)
Chapter 12 - The Regression Line:
slope and intercept for regression line (interpretation and computation), equation of the regression line, prediction using this equation, method of least squares (idea)
Chapter 13 - What are the Chances?:
chance, probability, Opposites Rule, conditional probabilities (conditional and unconditional chance), Multiplication Rule, independence and dependence, drawing with/without replacement from a box, Multiplication Rule for independent events
Chapter 14 - More About Chance:
listing the ways (dice, coins, cards, etc.), mutually exclusive events, Addition Rule for mutually exclusive events, general Addition Rule (see Possibility 1 and Possibility 2)
Chapter 16 - The Law of Averages:
the law of averages (interpretation), box models (construction: what numbers, how many of each number, how many draws), sum of draws
Chapter 17 - The Expected Value and Standard Error:
box average and box SD, expected value (EV) and standard error (SE) of the sum, square root law, using the normal curve for box models, classifying and counting, shortcut formulas for the SD for boxes with only two different tickets and for boxes with only 0 and 1 tickets
Chapter 18 - The Normal Approximation for Probability Histograms:
empirical histogram, probability histogram, similarity between empirical and probability histogram after a large number of draws, central limit theorem, normal approximation for sum of draws (related to "large", symmetric/asymmetric box)
Chapter 19 - Sample Surveys:
population, sample, parameter, statistic, inferences, polls, bias, non-response bias, problems due to wording of questions, probability methods, simple random sample (SRS), voluntary responses
Chapter 20 - Chance Error in Sampling:
expected value (EV) and standard error (SE) for the sample percentage, square root law, shortcut formula for calculating the SE percentage when multiplying the size of a sample by a factor, using the normal curve for 0-1 boxes

Note that even if a keyword is only listed once, it may be related to more than one chapter (e.g., confounding or SD).