|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
PSY 769: Intermediate Statistics in the Social Sciences
Fall 2020
Section 02, Registration Number 1865
Section 04, Registration Number 2804
Time:
Section 02: Thursdays 6:00-8:00 PM
Section 04: Thursdays 3:45-5:45 PM
Room:
Section 02: online (http://www.cuny.edu)
Section 04: online (http://www.cuny.edu)
The final decision is up to the Governor, but I anticipate that
both sections will be online synchronous courses.
"The primary purpose of the course is to
educate students about basic [statistical] theories and
techniques used in the behavioral sciences. The instructor
will briefly review information typically covered in
undergraduate statistics, and then introduce more advanced
statistical techniques. Upon completion, the student is
expected to understand the theoretical underpinnings for the
various statistical techniques and the assumptions that data
must meet to validly use these statistics. The student will
also gain an introduction to computer-based statistical
analysis. 30 hours. 3 credits." (from
Graduate Bulletin)
Many students enter the course several
years after having taken an undergraduate statistics
course. Moreover, new material often precedes review
material in order of logical development. As a
consequence, we will "briefly review" introductory material
as if it were new material and do so for most of the
semester. Nonetheless, from the start, we will cover
most of the material in more depth than a typical
undergraduate course. We will cover a number of topics
not included in a typical introductory course.
Computer based statistical analysis will
largely be limited to the use of spreadsheets. This is
because we offer another course entirely devoted to the
topic of computer based statistical analysis (PSY
737). I highly recommend that course to both thesis
and non-thesis students. Other advantages to
spreadsheets include the fact that you can easily look at
the formulas to know exactly what they are doing,
spreadsheets can be tailored to the course, kept simple and
focused, and thanks to open source office suites like Libre
Office, you can take them wherever you go without any need
for licenses to use commercial software.
Course
Objectives
1. Students will learn to view psychological phenomena from
the perspective of quantitative stochastic processes.
2. Students will develop linguistic competence in
interpreting, describing, and critically evaluating basic
statistical data.
3. Students will gain experience reasoning from and about
numerical data.
Note: It is not possible for this
course to cover all of the statistics that you might need
for a thesis. If you plan on doing a thesis, prepare
yourself for the fact that your data analysis will likely
involve at least some statistics not covered in this
course. See Blackboard for a document comparing what
it covered in this course to other benchmarks.
Required Reading
Bachman, R & Paternoster, R. (2016).
Statistical methods for criminology and criminal justice (4th
ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. (Caution: If you rent, make sure
that the rental term reaches through finals week.)
Please make sure that you get the 4th edition. The 4th
edition corrects a number of typographical errors and also
changes some of the key terms listed at the end of the
chapters.
Software
The course requires
the use of either Excel (available as part of
Microsoft Office in college computer labs) or Calc (freely available as part of
LibreOffice at the following URL: https://www.libreoffice.org/).
The programs are very similar, but there are some important differences.
Such spreadsheet software remains a popular
choice for data entry even
among researchers who use more specialized statistical
software for data analysis (the topic of PSY 737). However,
research shows that specialized statistical software can be more confusing
than enlightening when learning
fundamental
statistical concepts.
Excel/Calc offer a
simple computing environment for working with
data ideal for learning and gaining confidence
with fundamental
statistical
concepts. (Mac
users: You can open
both Excel and Calc files
using the Mac version of
LibreOffice.)
Additional optional software will be explained on Blackboard.
Internet Connection and Online Software
Class sessions will be held using either Blackboard
Collaborate or Zoom. Keep an eye on the announcements
section of Blackboard for details. Students will need to
be able to download files from Blackboard onto a computer with
spreadsheet software installed. Zoom requires installing
a free desktop client available from www.zoom.us.
Once that is installed, you should have a College Zoom account
accessible here, for
more information see the DOES web page here.
Blackboard is accessible through the CUNY portal: www.cuny.edu and works best with the
Mozilla
Firefox browser.
Class Time
The course design is a "flipped
classroom". I will not lecture. Instead, I will
post instructional materials associated with each week on
Blackboard for you to use outside of class. We will
use class time to (a) answer your questions, (b) work on
sample problems, (c) work on assignments, (d) review the
T&F questions from the presentation slides, and (e)
other activities to help reinforce learning.
Do the reading before the corresponding class. If you
have questions about the reading, bring them to class and I
will try to answer them there (ideally by posting them to a
discussion board on Blackbaord). I want to leave some
flexibility to use the class time in the manner you will find
most useful. Note, most students need to read each
chapter at least twice, often three times. Only the
first reading need precede the corresponding class.
Asking effective questions: Try to
formulate questions in an effective manner. If you ask
me to explain some topic, especially a fairly general one, I
will probably give a brief overview and refer you to the
appropriate passages from the textbook or instructional
materials. This is not an effective question (unless
that is what you are after) because you are not giving me
clear information about what you do not understand, leaving me
to guess or just duplicate what you can find elsewhere.
If something was unclear to you there, it is likely to be
equally unclear in my answer. Instead, try to be as
specific as you can about what you do not understand. If
you do not understand a particular term, tell me what you find
confusing about it. If you do not understand a
particular sentence or paragraph, cite the passage and explain
why it does not make sense to you. If you are confused
about a particular statistical analysis, explain the step that
you find unclear and what you think that the possible options
are. The more context and detail that you can give me,
the better the chances that I can give an answer that is
helpful and informative to you and to other students in the
class with similar questions.
Feel free to search for answer on the
Web. However, please do not attempt to post questions
related to the course using online fora like Cross Validated
or Stack Overflow. These are precious resources
maintained by busy people donating their time and
expertise. It is not appropriate to lean on them for
questions related to a course when you have ready access to an
instructor. Save that for later in your career when you
are no longer a student. (Also, you will probably get a
terse answer that either refers you to introductory material
or assumes far more background knowledge than you currently
have.)
Finally, everyone from me to your class mates
are depending on you to ask questions when you have
them. If you have a question, you can be fairly sure
that others have the same question. Your question is not
a "dumb question" but asking the question is the smartest
thing that you can do. Everyone else will appreciate
your having asked the question.
Non-Class Time
I recommend that you begin each week by reading the chapter
once through for the first time. From there, move to the
online instructional materials. These are organized into
subtopics which you can often explore in an order of your
choosing. In many ways, learning statistics is like
learning to skate board, ride a bike, or bake a cake: You can
read about it from a book but you really need to practice to
develop any skill. So, I strongly recommend taking time
to play around with the spreadsheet calculators provided each
week, plugging in different numbers and trying things out for
yourself. Instructional materials primarily include: (a)
pdf handouts, (b) spreadsheet workbooks and (c) videos.
I will also provide links each week to StatQuest
videos on related topics. Finish the first reading of
the chapter and the instructional materials before class meets
on Thursday. Use what you learn to complete the
Application assignment and to formulate questions to ask in
class. After class, I recommend completing the weekly
quiz before the start of the next week, to get it out of the
way.
Application Assignments
Weekly application assignments will appear on Blackboard in
the folder for each week. See Schedule
for due dates. These will be relatively short
assignments applying the material for that week. You can
complete them in a word processing program (or simple text
editor) and upload the file to Blackboard using the Blackboard
Assignment Tool in the same location. PDF (portable
document format) files are great because special characters
are stored internally. I can probably also open RTF
(rich text format), ODT (open document text), DOC (old
Microsoft Office format) and DOCX (new Microsoft Office
format) but these are riskier. If I cannot open a file,
or it appears jumbled, I will accept it as on time but send an
email request for a PDF file.
Quizzes
Weekly quizzes will comprise six questions. When there are two
chapters, there will be three questions from each chapter.
The quizzes will be available on Blackboard in the folder for
the week that they test (not the week that they are due!).
See Schedule for due dates. Your total
quiz grade is equal to the mean proportion correct across all
quizzes after dropping the two lowest quiz grades. See
Blackboard for a more detailed description of quiz items.
You only get one try at a quiz. So, I strongly recommend
completing all other assignments and mastering the material
through further study before taking the quiz. You are
allowed to use your notes, textbook, and other instructional a
materials while taking a quiz, but they are not required to
complete the quiz.
Grading
Your final grade comprises your Application
grade, your Quiz grade, your Quest grade for each of the three
parts of the course, and your Power Up. The Application
grade counts each of the 12 application assignments as 1 point
and equals the sum of these divided by 12. The Quiz
grade counts each quiz as 1 point, drops the 2 lowest, and
divides the sum by 10. The Quest grade for each part is
the number of quests that you completed. You are
required to complete 15 quests for Part 1 and for Part 2, and
12 quests for Part 3. Your final grade is based on the
proportion of the required quests completed in each
part. Specifically, I calculate min(N, F) / N where N is
the minimum required quests (15 or 12) and F the number of
completed quests for that part of the course. The Power
Up is calculated based on extra quests beyond those
required. Here, I calculate max(0, F - N) for each part
of the course, add them together, and divide by 14. As
such, you can never loose points with a negative Power Up, it
will never fall below zero. The Power Up reflects the
extra quests you complete beyond those required for each part
of the course.
Your Numeric Course Grade is calculated from
the above scores as follows: (.25 * Application) + (.25
* Quiz) + (.17 * Part 1 Quests) + (.17 * Part 2 Quests) + (.16
* Part 3 Quests) + (.05 * Power Up). In words,
Applications and Quizzes both count 25% of your grade,
required Quests count for 50%, and you can earn up to 5% extra
credit by completing extra quests.
I will use the following chart
to convert Numeric Course Grades to Letter Course
Grades. On the proportion (not percent) scale, I will
round .xx5 and above up and anything below .xx5 down.
Letter Grade | Numeric Course Grade |
A | .95-1.00 |
A- | .90-.94 |
B+ | .85-.89 |
B | .80-.84 |
B- | .75-.79 |
C+ | .70-.74 |
C | .65-.69 |
C- | .60-.64 |
F | .00-.59 |
Contact Information: (It usually works best to email me.)
Office
Hours: If we are online, I will dedicate a
Blackboard Discussion Board to questions and check it several
times a week. For anything that you do not want to share
with other students, contact me by email.
Office:
Room 10.65.04, 524 W59
Street. (Please do not leave things under my door or
in my mailbox because I will not be on campus regularly even
if the campus opens.)
Phone: 212-237-8784 Please do not use this if we are online. (I do not check voice mail when off campus.)
Email: KMarkus@aol.com
Week |
Section 02 and 04
Thursday Meeting Dates |
Assignments All assignments due by 3:PM on the date listed in the second column unless otherwise noted. |
Reading |
Topics |
1 |
8/27 |
Ch 1 (Recommended, Appendix A) |
Why am I here? What is this class about?
Syllabus. Statistical inference and Sampling. |
|
2 |
9/3 |
Week 1 Quiz Week 1 Application Week 2 Application |
Ch2-3 |
Levels of measurement, Distributions |
3 |
9/10 |
Week 2 Quiz Week 3 Application |
Ch 4-5 |
Central tendency, Dispersion |
4 |
9/17 |
Week 3 Quiz Chapters 1-5 Quests Deadline |
|
|
5 |
9/24 |
Week 5 Application |
Ch 6 |
Probability, Hypothesis Testing |
6 |
10/1 |
Week 5 Quiz Week 6 Application |
Ch 7 |
Point estimation, Confidence Intervals |
7 |
10/8 |
Week 6 Quiz Week 7 Application |
Ch 8 |
Single group mean and proportion |
8 |
10/15 |
Week 7 Quiz Week 8 Application |
Ch 9 |
Hypotheses and measures of association with categorical data |
9 |
10/22 |
Week 8 Quiz Week 9 Application |
Ch 10 |
Two group mean and proportion |
10 |
10/29 |
Week 9 Quiz Chapters 6-10 Quests Deadline |
||
11 |
11/5 (Last day to withdraw with 'W' grade) |
Week 11 Application |
Ch 11 |
One-way ANOVA |
12 |
11/12 |
Week 11 Quiz Week 12 Application |
Ch 12 |
Bivariate correlation and regression. |
13 |
11/19 |
Week 12 Quiz Week 13 Application |
Ch 13 |
Multiple regression |
14 |
12/3 (Classes do not meet 11/26) |
Week 13 Quiz Week 14 Application |
Ch 14
(http://statpages.org/logistic.html) |
Logistic regression |
15 (Finals week) |
12/17 (12/10 is a reading day) |
Week 14 Quiz Chapters 11-14 Quests Deadline |
|
|
|