College of Wooster
Department of Economics
Prof. J. Sell


TA: Emma Heath.
Emma's Hours are M (6:00 - 8:00pm), Th (7:00 - 9:00pm)
Emm's review session is Wednesday, Dec. 13 (6:00 - 8:00pm)

Economics 110 Readings and Assignments

Text: Department of Economics Coursebook extracted from Newbold, Carson, and Thorne, Statistics for Business and Economics 6th ed. (2006)

You are responsible for the assignments on this page. Check this page weekly for assignment updates. I will mention changes in class once, but the current information will always be here. To read some of the homework assignments, you require the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. If it is not already on the computer that you use, you can download it here.

Download Note:  Class presentations can be downloaded from my shared folder on the Novell Server.  See the course description for information on how to reach this folder using Macintosh or PC computers over the campus network.

Last Update: 5 December 2006

Week Day Topic Assignment/Reading

1
 Monday
  28Aug.		 What is statistics, what are statistical methods, and why are they important? Course Description.
Wednesday
  30 Sep.		 Introduction to EXCEL Getting Started with EXCEL Text, pp. 1-10

 

2
 Monday
  4 Sep.		 Frequency Distribution and Graphical Analysis of Data Text, pp. 11 - 25.
Suggested Problems:1 - 3
Wednesday
  6 Sep.		 Cont'd with work on Excel including Histograms. Suggested Problems: 5 (histogram only), 8, 13.

3
 Monday
  11Sep.		 Numerical Analysis of Data: Measures of Central Tendency. Text, Chapter 31-38
Suggested Problems: 19, 22, 26, 27
Wednesday
13 Sep.		 Numerical Analysis of Data: Measures of Dispersion. Z-scores; Chebychev's Inequality. Text, pp. 39-55
Suggested Problem: 28,

4
 Monday
  18 Sep.		 Decision Theory I: Models, Payoff Tables, Decision Rules Text:  pp.  479-88.
Suggested Problems: 3, 4, 5, 10, 21
Wednesday
20 Sep.

Probability concepts and measurement.

Special Probability Homework

Text:  pp. 85-88; 95-101
Suggested Problems: 10, 11, 18, 26

5
 Monday
25 Sep.		 First Examination
Wednesday
  27 Sep.		 Decision Theory II: Time series forecasting

Suggested Homework: MA and Exponential Smoothing for data. Probabability Homework Key

 

6
 Monday
  2 Oct.		 Decision Theory II: Seasonal Adjustment.  
Wednesday
  4 Oct.		 Trend (Regression) Forecasting

Methodology of Statistical Inference. The Discrete Uniform Distribution

Here's the forecasting spreadsheet from today's class. Please do it yourself as homework.

Text:  pp. 446-460.

Suggested Homework: Calculate forecasts from these S&P data.

7
 Monday
  9 Oct.

The Discrete Binomial Distribution. Begin continuous distributions.

Distributions Spreadsheet

Text: pp. 137-61 Special Homework here.

Suggested Homework:1, 8, 20, 21, 29, 31
Special Distribution Hwk.
Wednesday
11 Oct.		 Probability Distributions II: The Normal Distribution concluded. Text:  pp. 189 - 214
Suggested Homework: 2, 5, 10, 11, 22, 59, 60
Key to Special Distribution Hwk.

 

8
 Monday
  16 Oct.		 Fall Break
Wednesday
  18 Oct.
Sampling Distributions
 Special Disbtibution Homework 2 here.

9
 Monday
23 Oct.		 Sampling Methods and The Central Limit Theorem
 Text: pp. 230 - 47
Suggested Problems 7, 8, 11, 12, 24, 26, 37
Distribution Hwk. 2 Key
Wednesday
25 Oct.
Sampling Distributions
Suggested Problems: 28, 29, 34

 

10
 Monday
30 Oct.		 Cont'd.
Wednesday
  1 Nov.		 Internet Sources: COMPUSTAT and Data Ferrett
 Introduction to COMPUSTAT Compustat Homework (to be turned in as a quiz in class on Nov. 8).

 

11
 Monday
  6 Nov.		 Statistical Inference I: Confidence Intervals
 Text:  pp. 273 - 291
Suggested Problems: 53a, 55
Wednesday
  8 Nov.		 Cont'd.: Estimating Population Means
 Text:  pp. 295 - 313
Suggested Problems: 56, 58a,

 

12
 Monday
13 Nov.		 Second Examination
Wednesday
15 Nov.		 Hypothesis Testing I: One-sample tests
MBA Exam data for class		 Text: pp. 322 - 46
Suggested Problems: 10, 12, 21

13
 Monday
20 Nov.		 Hypothesis testing II Two-sample tests
 Text:  pp. 353-59
Suggested Problems: 34, 35, 37, 41
Submit Project Description by 4:00pm
Wednesday
22 Nov.		 Thanksgiving Break

14
 Monday
  27 Nov.		 Correlation analysis
Data File for Markets.xls
 Text: pp. 66-71
Suggested Problems: 8, 9
Wednesday
  29Nov.		 Statistical Inference III: Univariate Regression, Causal Forecasting (Regression)
Data file for Autos regression
 Text:  pp. 387-432
Suggested Problems: 4, 5
An introduction to STATA

15
 Monday
  4 Dec.		 Cont'd.
Data file for Knox regression
Data File for Crowding Out
Suggested Problems: 15, 21, 24
Wednesday
  6 Dec.

Cont'd.

Please submit course evaluation for Econ. 110.

Submit project in class.
    Final Exam (December 15, 2006 at 9:00am)