"I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren't beautiful, nothing is." - (Paul Erdos)

Math History Tidbit:

Henri Poincare (France, 1854-1912): Poincare believed that mathematics can be made to fit physical reality. His 491 publications enrich all branches of mathematics. He was the first to use topological methods in algebraic geometry. He is generally considered to be the founder of modern topology.

Herkimer's Corner

When Herkimer was a policeman, why didn't he arrest the judge who was wearing a stolen raincoat?

Answer: He believed that you should not book a judge by his cover.

 

Herky wants to know:

If 21 is pronounced twenty-one and 31 is pronounced thirty-one, why isn't 11 pronounced onety-one?

Why are a wise man and a wise guy opposite things?

ASSIGNMENT #67

Reading: Review Chapter 10, as necessary.

Exercises: Test 10A (handout).

Test 10B will be a take-home exercise (will be handed out tomorrow).

Items for reflection:

You are working with concepts and ideas fromChapter 10.

In this chapter, we have been working withsituations in which the population standard deviation is known. Thatis, we have worked with sample means that came from a population withknown parameter, s. In quality control situations, this parameter isfrequently known because it is somehow set. For example, you might befilling boxes of cereal with 32 ounces of cereal and with anallowable standard deviation of 0.4 ounces. Hence, when examiningrandom samples of size 100, you can calculate the standard deviationof the sample means using the population parameter 0.4. Thedistribution of sample means would have standard deviation(0.4)/sqrt(100) = 0.04.

Sometimes, however, you take samples from apopulation where the population standard deviation is not known. InChapter 11, we will begin to deal with this situation.

 

LINK TO SECTIONSUMMARIES

LINK TO STATISTICS HOMEPAGE

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Text:
The Practice of Statistics, by Yates, Moore, McCabe. New York,W.H. Freeman and Company, 1999. (;l 0-7167-3370-6)

Supplemental books:
The Cartoon Guide to Statistics, by Gonick and Smith. NewYork, HarperCollins Publishers, 1993. (ISBN 0-06-273102-5)
How to Lie with Statistics, by Darrell Huff. New York, W.W.Norton & Company, 1982 (ISBN 0-393-09426-X)

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