"The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by obvious realities. We need men and women who can dream of things that never were." -- (U.S. President John F. Kennedy)

Math History Tidbit:
Age of Reason (600 B.C. - 300 B.C.)

Golden Age of Geometry (300 B.C. - 300 A.D.)

Decline of Mathematical Knowledge (300 - 500): Ecclesiastical absolutism of the Christian Church crippled discussion of intellectual matters. Many Greek mathematical works were destroyed because they were thought to be based in paganism.

Herkimer's Corner


When Herkimer ran a nudist colony, what did he say to the impatient bill collector?

Answer: "Please bare with us."

Things Herky would like to know:
Should vegetarians eat animal crackers?

How do they get a deer to cross at the yellow road sign?

Reading: Section 2.2, Pages 83-91, and Summary (Page 97)

Exercise: 2.22, 2.23, 2.24, 2.25

Items for reflection:

You are in Section 2.2.

You should be able to understand, and read, thenormal distribution table. The TI-83 is also quite helpful. Here isa simple example. Suppose a normal distribution has a mean = 73.2and standard deviation = 4, and that we want to know the percentageof scores between between 72 and 76.

One approach: normalcdf(72, 76, 73.2, 4) =.3759477798, or about 37.6%.

Another approach: z72= (72-73.2)/4 = -0.3 andz76 =(76-73.2)/4 = 0.7. We can then calculate normalcdf(-.3,.7,0,1) =.3759477798, or about 37.6%

Make sure you can get this result using the normaldistribution table.

 

 

LINK TO SECTIONSUMMARIES

LINK TO STATISTICS HOMEPAGE

=======================================

Text:
The Practice of Statistics, by Yates, Moore, McCabe. New York,W.H. Freeman and Company, 1999. (ISBN 0-7167-3370-6)

Supplemental books:
The Cartoon Guide to Statistics, by Gonick and Smith. NewYork, HarperCollins Publishers, 1993. (ISBN 0-06-273102-5)
How to Lie with Statistics, by Darrell Huff. New York, W.W.Norton & Company, 1982 (ISBN 0-393-09426-X)

Back to the top of this page