This set of short lectures substitutes for the first course lecture. I'm planning to be in New York City, celebrating my daughter's wedding!

Each of the links to the right is to a web page that has a sound recording and things for you to see and do while you are listening.

Near the top of each of those pages are links to sound files in two formats. One is au. The other is mp3. Use the .au files, if your computer will play them, because they are smaller and download in less time.

When you click one of the sound file links, a new window will open showing your player's controls. You may have to click something to start playing the sound. Once the sound starts, switch back to the web page's window. If your internet connection is not speedy, there may be long pauses in the sound play.

To pause or rewind the sound, switch to the sound player window. Some of the sound recordings say that you can't pause the playback and that you can't follow a link to a different web page. That's not so. You can do those things, because the separate sound player window controls the sound.

The purpose of this course is to give you an intuitive understanding of regression analysis and other quantitative methods. It's going to be fun! Really!

Syllabus

Course requirements

Preview of the course topics

Content

You have an assignment due January 19, so let's get started with the content you'll need to do that.

Regression -- drawing a line to summarize a data set

What does drawing a line mean?

For assignment 1, drawing a line on a graph

The booklet's chapter on Simple Regression discusses the "true line" theory behind drawing a line through some data points. Read that, then take a look at this:

The true line and the regression line illustrated

The least squares line