Extra Credit Assignments

Two excerpts from a different statistics textbook (Utts, Jessica M. 1999. Seeing Through Statistics. Pacific Grove, CA: Duxbury Press) are on reserve at the library. The exercises for one chapter ("Reading the Economic News", #2, 4, 6, 14, 17) are worth up to 3% additional credit, as are the exercises for two additional chapters ("Psychological Influences on Personal Probability" [#2, 4, 6, 9, 12] and "When Intuition Differs from Relative Frequency" [#7, 11, 12, 15]). You may do one, two, or neither of these assignments.  You will be better able to do the first assignment after week 4 of the course, and the second assignment will require you to know the material discussed in weeks 10 & 11.  The first of these assignments is due Monday, April 9, and the second is due Monday, May 13.

Another type of extra credit assignment is to write a report on a media report (e.g., a magazine or newspaper article) that uses and/or interprets statistics incorrectly or inappropriately. The article must have been published sometime since December 15, 2000. Fully describe the error(s) and what should have been done to correct the error(s). Your report should be typed and double-spaced. Please attach a copy of the original article. You may turn in one such report on or before Monday, April 9, and another sometime in the remainder of the course on or before Monday, May 13. You can only turn in one report during each of these periods. Each report is worth up to 1% additional credit.

The final opportunity for earning extra credit is to attend class consistently (see syllabus for details).