Undergraduate Statistics Seminar
Semester 1 2017-2018
Wednesday, 15-17, Schreiber 007

 

Lecturer:         Saharon Rosset

Schreiber 022

Office hours: Sunday 16-18 (by email coordination only)

 

Home page: http://www.tau.ac.il/~saharon/StatisticsSeminar.htm

 

Philosophy

The goals of the seminar are:

·         Experience independent learning and dealing with scientific texts

·         Develop critical thinking in dealing with such texts

·         Gain experience in organizing material and presenting it to an audience

 

Topics

The seminar will combine several types of material: In the first part, we will read "general interest" articles analyzing topics in sports, society, education etc.; in the second part we will read and present chapters from a book or parts of a bigger and more difficult article.

 

Articles for presentation in first part

Each student will choose an article and present it in class (it is possible to suggest other articles as well):

1.      Robert Vallone, Amos Tversky and Thomas Gilovich. (1985). The hot hand in basketball: On the misperception of random sequences. Cognitive Psychology, Volume 17, Issue 3, July 1985, Pages 295–314. (לביא 1.11)

2.      Robert L. Wardrop. (1995). Simpson's Paradox and the Hot Hand in Basketball. The American Statistician , Vol. 49, No. 1 (Feb., 1995), pp. 24-28.  (לינוי 29.11) 

3.      Rachel Croson and James Sundali. (2005). The Gambler’s Fallacy and the Hot Hand: Empirical Data from Casinos. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty Volume 30, Number 3, 195-209. (אמיר 8.11)

4.      Ira Horowitz and Jim Lackritz. (2013). The Value of s at Which a Major League Player with Multiple Hitting Streaks of at Least s Games Might Be Termed ‘Streak Prone’. Chance, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp. 26-33. (טל אייל 29.11)

5.      Walter R. Mebane. (2010). Fraud in the 2009 presidential election in Iran? Chance, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 6-15. (אין צורך להציג את כל הניתוחים מהמאמר הארוך יחסית) (מנדל 15.11)

6.      David Spiegelhalter, Stuart Knight and Tony Sant. (2012). Breast implants: The scandal, the outcry, and assessing the risks. Significance, Vol. 9, Issue 6, 17-21. (אדר כחלון 15.11/22.11)

7.      David Rockoff and Heike Hofmann. (2011). How good is your eyeballing? Chance, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 35-45.

8.      Rebecca E. Trempel, Sergey Y. Kyrychenko and Matthew J. Moore. (2011). Does banning hand-held cell phone use while driving reduce collisions? Chance, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 6-11.  (נופר 8.11/15.11)

9.      Daniel Guzmán. (2011). Speaking stats to justice: Expert testimony in a guatemalan human rights trial based on statistical sampling. Chance, Vol. 24, No. 3, pp. 23-29. (ערן טולדנו)

10.  Roland C. Deutsch. (2011). Looking Back at South Africa: Analyzing and Reviewing the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Chance, Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 15-23. (רוי 15.11)

11.  Stephen Marks and Gary Smith. (2011). The two-child paradox reborn? Chance, Vol. 24, No. 3, pp. 54-59.(נגה רמות 22.11)

12.  John W. Emerson and Taylor B. Arnold. (2011). Statistical Sleuthing by Leveraging Human Nature: A Study of Olympic Figure Skating. The American Statistician Vol. 65, No. 3: 143–148.  

13.  Jean-François Plante and Nancy Reid. (2011). Statistics in the News. The American Statistician May 2011, Vol. 65, No. 2: 80–88. (להציג ארבעה נושאים מסעיפים 3,4 במאמר)  (יובל בן אריה)

14.  Marcello Pagano and Sarah Anoke. (2013). Mommy's Baby, Daddy's Maybe: A Closer Look at Regression to the Mean. Chance, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp. 4-9.(אייל אסיף 1.11)  

15.  Donald A. Redelmeier and Christopher J. Yarnell. (2013). Can Tax Deadlines Cause Fatal Mistakes? Chance, Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 8-14. (קארין כהן 8.11)

16.  Jonathan L. Wilson. (2013). Prediction Markets: How Accurate Are They? Chance, Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 32-38. (ויולה 22.11) 

 

Option for second part

Chapters from the book "An Introduction to the Bootstrap" by Efron and Tibshirani

Grade components

1.      Class presentations (two per student); 90% of grade,
Criteria for grading:

·         Understanding the topic and content of the article

·         Separating the important content from the less relevant parts

·         Critical reading, identifying gaps and errors

·         Understanding the technical content and its relation to previous courses in statistics

·         Clear, accurate and well organized presentation

·         (Potential bonus) Presenting well in English

 

2.      Active participation in other students' presentations: 10%

·         At most 3 absences allowed during the semester (best to let me know about any absence)