SOCY 2061: INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL STATISTICS, FALL 2006

-- M & W: 12:00-12:50, MCOL W100 --

Instructor: Professor Jason D. Boardman TA: Aaron Johnson

Office: Ketchum (KTCH) 206A Office: Ketchum (KTCH) 8

Email: boardman@colorado.edu Email: Aaron.Johnson@colorado.edu

Office Hours: 10-11:00 M, W Office Hours: 1:30-3:30 M, Th

Text: There is no required textbook for this class. All class readings will be drawn from Richard Lowry’s (Emeritus Professor, Department of Psyhology, Vassar College) website: http://faculty.vassar.edu/lowry/webtext.html

Course Description:

A significant share of sociological research relies almost exclusively on quantitative methods (e.g., statistical analyses) to investigate social phenomena. These researchers use large national surveys, public opinion polls, and census data to document, describe, and explain a wide range of sociologically motivated research questions. As a result, students of this body of research need to have a basic understanding of statistics if they are to be active participants in the local, regional, national, and international dialog within the sociological community. The primary goal of this class is to provide each student with the requisite skills to not only understand the mainstream sociological research but also to be critical consumers of statistical information that is often presented as “factual”. Although the primary emphasis is on social research, the information and skills that you will learn in this class will be applicable to most academic and non-academic careers.

The course is divided into three main sections: (1) Descriptive Statistics; (2) Inferential Statistics; and (3) Applied Statistical Techniques. Descriptive statistics are methods that allow you to present a set of scores in a parsimonious summary form that measure individual and social characteristics (e.g., socioeconomic status, self-esteem, residential segregation). The primary concepts that we emphasize are central tendency (e.g., mean, mode, median) and dispersion (e.g., standard deviation, variance, inter-quartile range). The second section, Inferential Statistics, is the backbone of statistical reasoning and it involves making estimates about a population (e.g., this entire class) based on a sample (e.g., 10 or 12 students in the class). This process necessarily involves the invocation of the basic rules of probability and it will introduce you to hypothesis testing which is used throughout the physical, behavioral, and social sciences. In the third section of the course, we will review five important applications of statistics (e.g., Cross-Tabs, Correlation, Simple Regression, and Multivariate Regression).

Course Requirements:

Grade	Percent	Points
A	100-95	650-618
A-	94-90	617-582
B+	89-87	581-563
B	86-83	562-537
B-	82-80	536-517
C+	79-77	516-498
C	76-70	497-452
C-	69-65	451-420
D	64-50	451-325
F	49-0	324-0

Attendance: Attendance to class and recitation section is mandatory. Any changes in the course syllabus and other announcements will be made in class and students are responsible for this information. Recitation attendance and participation will count as 50 points of the overall grade.

Examinations: There will be five in-class examinations in this course (see schedule below). Each examination is cumulative. Any missed examination will result in a score of 0 and make-up examinations will be given only in the case of a documented emergency. Each examination is worth 100 points

Problem Sets: There will be 5 homework assignments in the class worth 20 points each. All of the homework assignments are due on the day of the corresponding examination. Please turn your homework in with your examination. No credit will be given for assignments turned in late.

Grades: Final grades are based on students’ total point score as determined by participation and performance on examinations and homework assignments. Grades are based on a total of 650 points and are presented in the table to the right.

Communications: Email is an official form of communication. You are responsible for checking your University of Colorado official email address on a regular basis. To send me an email, you must use SOCY2061 as the subject of your email. This can be followed by whatever subject you’d like (e.g. SOCY2061: homework #3) but your message must start with SOCY2061. I will read and respond to email send to me from this class only during my office hours.

Policies for Students with Special Needs

If you qualify for accommodations because of a disability, please submit to me a letter from Disability Services (DS) early in the semester so that your needs may be addressed.  DS determines accommodations based on documented disabilities (303-492-8671, Willard 322, www.colorado.edu/sacs/disabilityservices)

Religious Holidays

Please contact the instructor regarding any conflicts between religious observance dates and course examinations or assignments.

Classroom Behavior and Honor Code Policies

As a result of extensive discussions with and recommendations from faculty and students, a new classroom behavior policy procedures and honor code system have been adopted by the University.  Please see (http://www.colorado.edu/policies/index.html) and (http://www.colorado.edu/academics/honorcode/) for more information, respectively.

COURSE SCHEDULE
Week	Monday	Wednesday	Homework/Reading
SECTION ONE: Distributional parameters
1	August 28:	August 30:
	Overview: parameters and estimates	Central Tendency	Ch2 (I)
2	September 4:	September 6:
	LABOR DAY--NO CLASS--	Dispersion	Ch2 (II)
3	September 11:	September 13:
	Skewness and Kurtosis	EXAMINATION # 1 HW #1 (turn in with exam)
SECTION TWO: Probability and normal distributions
4	September 18:	September 20:
	Probability	The normal distribution (Z scores)	Ch 5 (I, II, & append.) Ch6 and appendices
5	September 25:	September 27:
	Standardized Distributions	EXAMINATION # 2 Homework #2 (turn in with exam)
SECTION THREE: Inferential Statistics
6	October 2:	October 4:
	Standard Error	Confidence Intervals: means & proportions	Ch 9 (I-III, & append.) Ch 10
7	October 9:	October 11:
	Hypothesis testing	EXAMINATION #3 Homework #3 (turn in with exam)	Ch 7
SECTION FOUR: Differences in means and proportions
8	October 16:	October 18:
	Difference in independent means	Difference in dependent means	Ch 11 (not 11a)
9	October 23:	October 25:
	Testing the difference in proportions	Confidence intervals for differences in means and proportions	Ch 12 (not 12a)
10	October 30:	November 1:
	Inferential statistics review	EXAMINATION #4 Homework #4 (turn in with exam)
SECTION FIVE: Applied bivariate analysis
11	November 6:	November 8:
	Pearson Correlation	Significance of Pearson correlation coefficient and rank order correlation	Ch 3 (I, II) Ch 3b Ch 4(appendices)
12	November 13:	November 15:
	Chi-square test of independence	Fisher Exact Probability Test	Ch 8 (I & II), Ch. 8a, and appendix
	November 20:	November 22:
	Fall break (no class)	Fall break (no class)
13	November 27:	November 29: