Detailed Schedule -- Modeling the Environment

Detailed Schedule -- MONT 105N, Analyzing Environmental Data

Spring 2019, 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 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

B -- refer to exerpt from Norman Bryson, Looking at the Overlooked (on course homepage)
M -- refer to excerpt from Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems (on course homepage)
W -- refer to excerpt from Paul Wapner, Living Through the End of Nature (on course homepage)
MDA -- refer to Modeling and Data Analysis (on Moodle)

Date	Class Topic	Reading

1/23	Course Introduction	Start reading M
1/25	Systems and feedback	M, pages 35-58
1/28	The Systems ``Zoo''	M, pages 35-58
1/30	The ``Systems Perspective''	Start looking at MDA, Chapter 9
2/1	Measures of the center of a dataset -- Problem Set 1 due	MDA, section 9.2
2/4	Measures of Spread and Distribution	MDA, section 9.3
2/6	Chapter 9 project, start	MDA, section 9.6
2/8	Chapter 9 project, continued -- Problem Set 2 due	MDA, section 9.6
2/11	Outliers in data	MDA, section 9.3, 9.4
2/13	Probabilities	MDA, 2.4
2/15	Conditional probabilities -- Problem Set 3 due	MDA, section 10.2
2/18	Independence of events	MDA, section 10.2
2/20	More on understanding probabilities	MDA, 10.2
2/22	Preparation for WAM visit -- Problem Set 4 due	B
2/25	Discrete distributions and pmfs	MDA, 10.3
2/27	Expected value and variance	MDA, 10.4
3/1	Probability densities -- Paper 1 due	MDA, 10.5
3/4,6,8	Spring Break -- no class	MDA, Chapter 10
3/11	Normal distributions	MDA, 10.6
3/13	Z-scores and normal probabilities	MDA, section 10.7
3/15	Chapter 10 Project -- Problem Set 5 due; Journals collected	MDA, section 10.9
3/18	Chapter 10 Project, continued	MDA, section 10.9
3/20	Models of sampling	MDA, section 11.2
3/22	Midterm Exam	MDA, Chapters 9 and 10
3/25	Sampling from normal populations	MDA, section 11.3
3/27	More on sampling from normal populations	MDA, section 11.3
3/29	Central Limit Theorem -- Problem Set 6 due	MDA, section 11.4
4/1	The chi-square distributions (an overview)	MDA, section 11.5
4/3	Hypothesis Tests	MDA, sections 12.1, 12.2
4/5	Tests for means and proportions -- Problem Set 7 due	MDA, section 12.3
4/8	p-values and hypothesis tests	MDA, section 12.4
4/10	Chi-square tests for model fit and independence	MDA, section 12.6
4/12	Chapter 12 Project	MDA, section 12.8
4/15	Spare day -- Paper 2 due	EM, section 11.4
4/17	Humans and nature, another view?	W
4/19,22,24	No class -- Easter break and Academic Conference	W
4/26	Humans and nature, another view?	W
4/29	Final project presentations
5/1	Final project presentations
5/3	Final project presentations
5/6	Semester wrap-up -- Final project papers due

There will be no Final Exam for this course; it is replaced by the final project

Last modified: January 8, 2019