Kingsborough Community College
The City University of New York

MAT 20: Elements of Statistics - 3 credits, 3 hours

Course Coordinator: Professor Ron Forman

Course Description: Introduction to probability and statistics including: tabulation and graphing of distributions, central and dispersion tendencies, comparison techniques, correlations and predictive techniques. Instruction and practice in the use of desk calculators, and the basic language. Recommended for students planning careers in economics, education, psychology, sociology, data processing and environmental technology.

Catalog Description: Same as Above

Eligibility: Student must have passed the Math A Regents.

Course Explanation and Objectives: The purpose of this course is to introduce students to rudiments of statistics and probability. Particular attention is paid to practical real-life applications and statistics.

Topical Course Outline:
1. Descriptive Measures (pg. 88-116) 5 Lessons
a. Measures of Center: mean, sample mean, median mode
b. Measures of variation: standard deviation, sample standard deviation, Z scores, Chebychev rule.

2. Probability Concepts (pg. 145-189, 196-208) 9 Lessons
a. Probability Basics
b. Rules of Probability
c. Contingency Tables
d. Conditional Probability
e. Independence and Multiplication Rule
f. Counting Rules: Basic Counting Principle, Permutations, Combinations

3. Discrete Random Variables (pg. 216-248) 4 Lessons
a. Mean of Random Variable
b. Mathematical Expectation
c. Binomial Distribution

4. The Normal Distribution (pg. 262-289) 4 Lessons
a. Area under Standard Normal Curve
b. Working with Normally Distributed Variables

5. Sampling Distribution of the Sample Mean (pg. 310-333) 2 Lessons
a. Sampling Error
b. Mean and standard deviation of the sample mean
c. Sampling distribu5tion of the sample mean

6. Inferential Statistics (pg. 340-357) 3 Lessons
a. Estimating a population mean
b. Confidence intervals when population standard deviation is both known and unknown

7. Hypothesis Testing (pg. 382-400) 3 Lessons
a. Nature of hypothesis testing
b. Type I and Type II errors

NOTE: The remaining 6 lessons will be devoted to testing and review sessions.

Text Book: Bittinger, Ellenbogen & Johnson, Elementary and Intermediate Algebra Concepts and Applications, 3rd Edition 2001, (ISBN 0201719665).

Methods of Teaching: The class will be conducted as a lecture with students participating in the development of the lessons.Students will have calculators to help them with the calculations necessary to work out problems in class.

Assignments: Homework will be assigned each day. These assignments will be predominantly exercises from the book. There will be some additional homework on topics where the textbooks problems are not appropriate to the work done in class.

Methods of Evaluation: There will be three quizzes during the semester and one departmental final examination.