–Reading assignments will be posted here, as will review material, other news of interest, and links to additional Chance-related Web sites. This site can be reached from my Fall 02008 class schedule page (http://www.albion.edu/mathcs/MBollman/Fall08.html) as well.

Journal (details follow)................................................ 140 pts.

Final project................................................................ 150 pts.

TOTAL....................................................................... 1200 pts.

Percentage	Number of points	Numerical grade
[92,100]	[1104,1200]	4.0
[90,92)	[1080,1103]	3.7
[88,90)	[1056,1079]	3.3
[82,88)	[984,1055]	3.0
[80,82)	[960,983]	2.7
[78,80)	[936,959]	2.3
[72,78)	[864,935]	2.0
[70,72)	[840,863]	1.7
[68,70)	[816,839]	1.3
[60,68)	[720,815]	1.0
[0,60)	[0,719]	0.0

What Are The Chances?: Voodoo Deaths, Office Gossip, & Other Adventures In Probability, Holland (WAC)

Also required: A scientific or graphing calculator. Your choice of model–if you have one you like, by all means continue to use it. If you’re looking to buy one, I recommend a TI-84+. In-class demonstrations will use the TI-83+ or TI-84+.

Tentative schedule of events
Week of (Monday)	Reading assignments and other news (Text codes appear above)			Lab topic (Friday) (Labs meet in Putnam 251)
Week of (Monday)	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Lab topic (Friday) (Labs meet in Putnam 251)
8/25	Introduction	R Ch. 1-4	EPA §1.1-1.3	Intro to Minitab
9/1	Labor Day	EPA §1.4-1.5	EPA §2.1-2.2	Discrete Simulation
9/8	EPA §2.3-2.4	CR Ch. 1-5	Sept. 11 articles	Lab 3
9/15	HWM 1-3	HWM 4-5	HWM 6-7	Drinking, Driving, and Gambling
9/22	Review	Exam 1	R Ch. 5-6	Intro to 5 Steps
9/29	TC 1-5	TC 6-7	TC 8-13	385,000 Dice
10/6	EPA §3.1-3.2	EPA §3.3-3.4	EPA §3.5-3.6	Lab 7
10/13	Fall Break			Lab 8
10/20		Review	Exam 2	Lab 9
10/27				Lab 10
11/3				Lab 11
11/10				Lab 12
11/17				Lab 13
11/24	Review	Exam 3	Thanksgiving Break
12/1				Reading Day
12/8	Final Exam Week: Final Presentations: Monday, December 8, 11:30 AM-1:30 PM

Blank spaces in the above schedule will be filled in as the semester progresses. Updates will be announced in class and posted at the Albion Chance Web site.

1. Homework assignments will be collected on occasional Mondays, and also on Tuesday, September 2. The exact problems to be collected will be specified in advance and posted on the Chance Web site. Late homework will not be accepted after graded work has been returned.

2. Hour-exams will be given in class on the dates indicated. Note well that there is an exam scheduled for Tuesday, November 25–this is the last class day before Thanksgiving break. This exam will not be given early or late to accommodate your travel plans. Accordingly, you should plan your holiday travel with the fact in mind.

3. Lab sessions will be held on Fridays in Putnam 251. Information for each lab will be distributed that day.

4. Most non-lab classes will begin with a brief (3-5 minutes) 3-point quiz on the day’s reading assignment. If you are careful about doing the reading in advance, these should pose no problem. No makeup quizzes will be given.

5. Attendance at both classes [MTW 1:10-2:00 PM, Palenske 221; F 1:10-2:00 PM, Putnam 251] and association meetings [R, 12:10 AM-1 PM, Palenske 221], is required. Attendance in class will be taken with the reading quizzes; attendance on days with no reading quiz (including lab days) will be monitored with a sign-in sheet. On these days, it is your responsibility to be sure that you have signed in each day. Your decision to take this course constitutes a decision to attend class every time it meets. (This works both ways, incidentally: My decision to teach this class is a commitment to offer class sessions worth attending. I am sure you will let me know if I’m not doing that.) This course moves extremely rapidly, and those who miss class frequently will find themselves soon behind. Students missing four or more days of class (one week of class) for other than College-sponsored events or health problems as certified by a health care professional will be ineligible for any deviation from the grading scale given above.

6. The academic dishonesty policy for this course will be that specified in the Student Handbook, with the following modification: The local penalty for confirmed cases of academic dishonesty will be a double negative grade on the assignment–that is, if that assignment in question is worth (for example) 50 points, your grade for that assignment will be -100 points.

7. Unless you are an EMT, physician, firefighter, or person serving in some other life-saving capacity in your spare time, your cell phone is to be turned off and put away while you are in this class. If your cell phone rings during class, you will receive a 2% deduction in your final grade, cumulative with each incident.

One of the challenges in teaching any mathematics course is connecting the mathematics to the lives of your students. One way to help me meet this challenge is for you to be on the lookout for incidents in your life when issues related to chance pop up. Toward that end, one requirement of this course is that you keep a Chance Journal this semester. This need not be a formal writing exercise–what I have in mind is a casual project where you simply keep track of occasions in your day–not including what happens in this class–when probability or statistics are used. For example, if some statistical information is used on the evening news, make a note of it and your reactions to it. (Quite frequently, the media are incorrect in their use of statistics–you might find it interesting and entertaining [I certainly do.] to assess their accuracy.) In addition, there may be occasional assigned journal entries, where I ask you to comment or reflect on something that comes up in class.

A possible way to organize your journal entries is to note the following things for each mathematical occasion:

This is just an organizational suggestion–your actual entries need not be so formal.

Journals will be collected in accordance with the following Chance scheme: Each Wednesday starting September 3, someone from the class will be selected to roll two standard dice of a number of sides indicated below:

If that person rolls doubles, journals will be collected on the spot and the number of sides will start again at the top of the list. If not, keep writing until next Wednesday.

Independent of the die rolls, journals will be collected on Wednesday, October 8 (immediately before Fall Break), and Wednesday, December 3 (right at the end of the semester). No dice will be rolled on those days.

2 points: Some additional thought that is not able to articulate the connections to what we’ve been studying. The student gets the big picture, but the ideas need refinement.

4 points: Exceptional-requires significant understanding or application beyond that required. (almost never given)

Note well: A grade of “3" should not be thought of as “3/4 = 75%”. The 4 grade is there to recognize uncommon excellence.

10 points/week will be allocated for journal entries. However, no more than 2 points per week may be earned by 1-point entries. This should give you some sense of how many entries are required. As to what I’ll be looking for when I read journals, I am concerned with the following:

3. Mechanics–including grammar and spelling. This is not as critical as you might think, because a journal should primarily be for the eyes of the writer. On the other hand, if I can’t follow what you’re saying, that’s a problem.