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:

Global warming proof undeniable, by Michel Jarraud, The New Zealand Herald, May 11, 2009, general news section.

"Realists" challenge claim of consensus on warming, by Marieke van der Vaart, The Washington Times, June 7, 2009, Citizen Journalism section, page A10.

Document source: LexisNexis. (Sign in via the Colgate portal. If you search for Global Warming, you will get over 900 entries. Sorting them into chronological order will put these two near the end -- for me they were 926 and 928 out of 997.)

Possible essay questions:

The two articles reflect a controversy over global warming. Why is this topic controversial when most scientific controversies pass unnoticed by the press?
How is the first "Scientific Perspectives" talk, Lance Simmens on "The Climate Crisis," related to this issue?
If it turns out that human carbon emissions do not affect global warming, are there still reasons to pursue "green" technologies? If so, describe some of them. If not, what are the repercussions for government and society. (Be brief -- this question is worthy of book-length treatises.)

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.