Detailed Schedule -- MONT 101N, Analyzing Environmental Data

Spring 2018, Prof. Little

Note: All information on this page is still under development and subject to change.
The following day-by-day listing shows the planned topic for each day's class and the due dates of the larger individual assignments. There will also be and group writeups from the group project days. The due dates for those will be announced when the assignments are made. This is a tentative, evolving schedule. Topics may be added, deleted, or rearranged during the course of the semester. Any changes will be announced in class and here. Note: Reading assignments labeled

Date Class Topic Reading
1/24 Course Introduction Start reading TS, Introduction and Chapter 1
1/26 Systems and feedback TS, Introduction and Chapter 1 (pages 1 - 34)
1/29 The Systems ``Zoo'' TS, Chapter 2 (pages 35 - 72)
1/31 Why systems work and why they surprise us TS, Chapters 3 and 4 (pages 75 - 110)
2/2 System traps and opportunities -- Problem Set 1 due TS, Chapter 5 (pages 121 - 148)
2/5 Leverage points TS, Chapters 6 and 7 (pages 145 - 185)
2/7 Transition to data analysis EM, Chapter 9
2/9 Measures of the center of a dataset -- Problem Set 2 due EM, section 9.2
2/12 Measures of Spread and Distribution EM, section 9.3
2/14 Exploratory data analysis EM, section 9.4
2/16 More on exploratory data analysis -- Problem Set 3 due EM, section 9.4
2/19 Chapter 9 project EM, section 9.6
2/21 Chapter 9 project, continued EM, section 9.6
2/23 Spare day -- Paper 1 due
2/26 Preparation for presentations to the cluster
2/28 Preparation for presentations to the cluster
3/2 Preparation for presentations to the cluster
3/5,7,9 Spring Break -- no class EM, Chapter 10
3/12 Final run-throughs of presentations
3/14 Probabilities, conditional probabilities, and independence EM, section 10.2
3/16 More on conditional probabilities and independence EM, section 10.2
3/19 Discrete distributions EM, section 10.3
3/21 Expected value and variance EM, section 10.4
3/23 Probability densities -- Midterm Papers Due EM, section 10.5
3/26 Normal distributions EM, section 10.6
3/28 Z-scores and normal probabilities -- Problem set 4 due EM, section 10.7
3/30,4/2 Easter Break -- no class EM, Chapter 10
4/4 Discuss "One Good Man" by Sherman Alexie text on course homepage
4/6 Z-scores and normal probabilities EM, section 10.7
4/9 Models of sampling EM, section 11.2
4/11 Sampling from normal populations EM, section 11.3
4/13 More on sampling from normal populations -- Paper 2 due EM, section 11.3
4/16 Central Limit Theorem EM, section 11.4
4/18 The chi-square distributions (an overview) EM, section 11.5
4/20 Chapter 11 project -- Problem set 5 due EM, section 11.6
4/23 Hypothesis tests EM, sections 12.1 and 12.2
4/25 Academic conference -- no class EM, section 12.3
4/27 Tests for means and proportions -- Problem Set 6 due EM, section 12.3
4/30 p-values and hypothesis tests EM, section 12.4
5/2 Chi-square tests for model fit EM, section 12.7
5/4 Chi-square tests for independence -- Problem Set 7 due EM, section 12.7
5/7 Semester wrap-up EM, section 12.7
The Final Exam for this course will be given at the published time for MWF 9:00am classes -- Tuesday, May 15 at 11:30am.

Last modified: April 2, 2018