Unit 6: Probability

Text reading and review exercises:

Review chapters 13, 14 and 15 of FPP and do the following review exercises:
Chapter 13 [pages 234-236]: 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11
Chapter 14 [pages 252-254]: 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Chapter 15 [page 261-263]: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 11

Reading:

Sharon Begley, "Math Is Hard, Barbie Said," Newsweek, "On Science" column, October 27, 2008, page 57.

Document source: LexisNexis.

Possible essay questions:

Why would the former East and West Germany differ so much in the number of girls on their Math Olympiad teams?
The Fields Medal (what Begley calls the "math Nobel") is given only to people under the age of 40. (As a result, Andrew Wiles, who finally proved Fermat's Last Theorem, will not get one.) Do you think that age requirement will make a difference in the time until a woman wins it? If so, how and why? If not, why not?
Does the parenthetical comment "... U.S. girls (who are more sensitive to social status than boys)" imply a "hard-wiring" of girls' brains for more social sensitivity, or is there another explanation?

Writing Assignment (Midterm Project I)

As you read the final project guidelines, you will see that, for that project, you are required to write six sections, not including the Bibliography and Appendix sections. The assignment for this unit is to write the Discussion/Conclusions section and the Self-Critique section for a project that has already been partly written. The first four parts of the report and the bibliography and appendix for that experiment are available HERE. As in your final project, the section you will write for this assignment describes the inferences you draw (or do not draw) from the data gathered and the statistical tests performed, concerning the questions raised in the Statement of the Problem and Background sections. (It does not merely repeat the Results section, where the statistical summaries, in this case correlations, have already been recorded; rather, it interprets those correlations.) It also lists some influences that might have affected the results and suggests things that might have been done (adjustments to the study, or completely separate studies) for further investigation of the topic. (To acknowledge that your conclusion is not the last word on the subject, or even that your conclusion denies the result you expected to find, is not to your discredit. Rather, it indicates a scientifically honest frame of mind.) This paper should probably add up to 2-4 pages.