Problem Set #8
Geog 3000: Advanced Geographic Statistics
Instructor: Dr. Paul C. Sutton
This problem set has three distinct parts.
Part 1: Provide a list of the 10-20 most useful web sites for improving/enhancing your learning experience in this course. Most of you posted some URLs to various web sites including ‘The Khan Academy’ to the discussion boards. I enjoyed some of these web sites immensely. I will create a web page of “links to useful statistics links” for future courses based on your responses to this.
Part 2: This is your chance to let me know what you think a reasonable problem set for this class should look like. It seems that the first four problem sets for this course were too long. I hope I responded with more appropriate abbreviated problem sets for the second four. These problem sets can stick to material we covered in this class or foray into new territory. Topics I would love to see covered are: Logistic Regression, Anova, Multi-Dimensional Scaling, Discriminant Analysis, Regression Tree Analysis, Monte Carlo Simulations, Time Series Analysis (harmonic, spectral, ARMA), Geographically weighted regression, Point Pattern Analysis, Binary decision tree classification, or something of your own particular interest.
Part 3: This is my first attempt at teaching statistics on-line. I am interested in your feedback with respect to my approach. You will have a chance to anonymously punish me via the traditional course evaluation mechanisms. I would also appreciate constructive criticism of my approach to teaching this course so I can do a better job in the future. Particular aspects of my methods I would like to hear more about are: 1) Powerpoint Summaries: Having you prepare powerpoints as opposed to my providing of powerpoints via blackboard. Is that a good or a bad thing? Do you feel that you learned anything by producing a powerpoint summary of some of the course material? Did you learn anything from other student’s powerpoint summaries that I posted to the course web site? Would you have preferred to have powerpoint summaries of the reading material for this course? 2) Problem Sets: My opinion is that the only way to learn statistics is to work statistics problems and explain and interpret the results of those problems and or random phenomena. I consider the problem sets to be the lion’s share of the work in this course. Did you find them useful? Were they too hard? Were they too easy? Were they too long? What should I do to improve the problem sets? 3) Discussion Boards: I personally think the discussion boards for this course worked quite well. I will look into Google Wave as an alternative vehicle for conducting these but DU is wed to Blackboard (Blackboard bugs me too). What did you think of the blackboard discussion boards for this course?
4) Grading: I don’t think anyone will be getting less than a ‘B’ in this class if they turn in all the assignments. Is the grading too easy? Is the grading too hard? Is there too much collaboration on the discussion boards? I am in a quandary about this. I am curious what students think. 5) Course Materials: What did you think of the textbooks and supplementary articles and book chapters. What was good? What was bad? What was useful? What was useless? What did you think of JMP? Should I teach this using Excel instead?