Economics 391: Economics and Business Statistics, spring 2014


Instructor: Prof. Jeremy A. Sandford

Office hour: TH 12:30-1:30pm, 335L B&E, or by appointment
Lecture: 3:30-4:45pm MW, BE 301

Midterm exam dates: Monday February 24, and Wednesday, April 2, in class
Final exam date: Monday, May 5, 3:30pm-5:30pm

Required texts: Keller, Statistics, South-Western College Pub

Syllabus

Mandatory student survey

Homework 1, answers
Homework 2, answers
Homework 3, answers
Homework 4, answers datasets:Xr16-11, Xr16-15, Xr16-107, GSS2008.xls
Homework 5, answers, datasets: Xr18-17, GSS2008.xls (nb. For problem 4, in the GSS data sex=1 means male, sex=2 means female)
Homework 6 (ungraded), answers

Group project assignment


Schedule


Wednesday, January 15: Basic probability exercises
reading: Keller, chapter 6
reading: The probability of injustice, The Economist, 1/22/2004
optional: An interview with Emily Oster

Monday, January 20: no class (MLK Day)

Wednesday, January 22: Conditional probability, random variables, mean and variance
reading: Keller, chapters 6-7

Monday, January 27: Binomial and Poisson random variables, example problems
reading: Keller, chapter 7

Wednesday, January 29: no class

Monday, February 3: no class

Wednesday, February 5: no class

Monday, February 10: Continuous probability distributions: uniform, exponential, and normal
reading: Keller, chapter 8

Wednesday, February 12: Properties of the normal distribution, standard normal distribution
reading: Keller, chapter 8

Monday, February 17: Sampling distributions, interval estimates
reading: Keller, chapter 9

Wednesda, February 19: sampling distributions, interval estimation, exam review
reading: Keller, chaopters 9-10

Monday, February 24: Midterm exam 1 (exam, with answers)
topics: basica probability, discrete and continuous probability distributions, sampling distributions
Fall 2013 midterm 1, answers
Spring 2013 midterm 1, answers

Wednesday, February 26: Estimation, confidence intervals
reading: Keller, chapter 10

Monday, March 3: no class

Wednesday, March 5: hypothesis testing: terminology, rejection regions, type I errors
reading: Keller, chapter 11

Monday, March 10: hypothesis testing: p-values and probability of type II error
reading: Keller, chapter 11

Wednesday, March 12: linear regression analysis: terminology, interpreting regression coefficients
reading: Keller, chapter 16

Monday, March 17: no class (spring break)

Wednesday, March 19: no class (spring break)

Monday, March 24: regression: desirable properties of error terms, R^2, using Excel to produce regression results
reading: Keller, chapter 16

Wednesday, March 26: more practice with producing and interpreting results. F statistics, adjusted R^2, predicting values of y for given values of x
reading: Keller, chapter 16

Monday, March 31: regression, exam review

Wednesday, April 2: Midterm 2 (topics: interval estimation, hypothesis testing, regression)
Fall 2013 Midterm 2, answers
Spring 2013 Midterm 2, answers
Fall 2012 Midterm 2, answers

Monday, April 7: Intro to multiple regression
reading: Keller, chapter 17

Wednesday, April 9: Multiple regression
reading: Keller, chapter 17

Monday, April 14: The effect of police on crime
reading: Klick, Jonathan and Alexander Tabarrok (2005), "Using terror alert levels to estimate the effect of police on crime," Journal of Law and Economics, 48(1), 267-279

Wednesday, April 16: Dummy variables, polynomial models, model building
reading: Keller, chapter 19

Monday, April 21: Mandatory office hour meetings to discuss group regression projects schedule

Wednesday, April 23: The effect of prison conditions and the death penalty on crime
reading: Katz, Lawrence, Steven Levitt, and Ellen Shustorovich (2003), "Prison conditions, capital punishment, and deterrence," American Law and Economics Review, 5(2), 318-343

Monday, April 28: Lying with statistics: Simpson's paradox and examples
reading: (Dis)aggregation and Simpson's paradox
Momentous spring at the 2156 Olympics?
Examples of dubious statistical claims

Wednesday, April 30: Lying with statistics: group exercises
Futher examples (with explanations)

Monday, May 5, 3:30pm: final exam (cumulative)
Fall 2013 final exam
Spring 2013 final exam