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University of Cincinnati

College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning


School of Planning
PLANNING STATISTICS I (23PLAN345)
Winter 2010

Instructor: Kenneth Cheruiyot


Office: DAAP 6215
Office hours: By appointment
Phone: 432 1275
Email: koechkc@mail.uc.edu
Graduate Assistant:
Email:
Lectures: T, H, 11:00 - 12:20 PM Aronoff 3410

Course Description
The course is designed for planners. All efforts will be expended to maximize the use of
planning-related examples. The course, intended to improve quantitative reasoning, will cover
both descriptive and introductory inferential statistics. The course objectives are aimed at
enabling students to:
• Understand principles of measurements and limits of each.
• Be able to organize and represent sample data sets using measures of central tendency
and dispersion.
• Understand basic inferential/inductive statistical concepts.
• Be able to interpret and draw conclusions from summarized data.

By the end of the course, students are supposed to make more informed decisions in daily life by
understanding the limitations of generalizing from small datasets and limited daily experiences.
They should also be critical (i.e., evaluate conclusions drawn by others) of planning reports that
use elementary statistics and be ready to take advanced studies in statistics.

Reading Materials
The required text for this class is as given below:
Sanders, Donald H. & Robert K. Smidt. 2000. Statistics: a first course. McGraw-Hill
science/Engineering/math 6th edition.

Course Requirements
Prerequisites
Knowledge of high school algebra.

Teaching Methodology
Instructions will consist of classroom lectures, problem solving/computations, and discussions.
The instruction time will be divided equally among these class activities.

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Evaluations and Grading Weights
Your performance in this class with respect to how you have mastered the material taught will be
your personal effort. You will not be competing with others. However, you are encouraged to
work with others to improve your performance.
Grading criteria will be as follows:

Class attendance and participation 10%


In-class mid-term exam (due on February 11, 2010) 25%
Final exam (due on university exam week) 25%
Home work assignments (weekly) 40%
Any changes to the above can only be made at the instructor’s discretion.

The grading system follows the standard university grading scales as follows:
Excellent 90-93 A- 93.4-100 A
Good 80-83.3 B- 83.4-86.6 B 86.7-89.9 B+
Satisfactory 70-73.3 C- 73.4-76.6 C 7.7-79.9 C+
Poor 60-63.3 D- 63.4-6.6 D 66.7-69.9 D+
Fail //////// //////// 0-60 F //////// ////////

Communications
Official communications will be through UC email and blackboard. You may contact, XXX, my
GA for this class, by email at XXXX.

Class Attendance and Punctuality


Class starts at 11:00 AM prompt. Your responsibility is to attend class everyday and read the
handouts and any assigned readings in advance. Also, you should be ready to participate in
answering or ask questions in class, response to fellow students, comments or questions.
Lateness, early departure, or absence due to sickness should be avoided at all costs.

Home works
Homework will be posted on blackboard (on a Monday) and will be due in class the following
Monday. You are expected to complete your homework on schedule. Late home works will not
be accepted. These assignments can be done individually or in teams. Home works should be
professionally and neatly prepared.

The GA will be available to assist you with home works. Home works will account for
40% of your total grade.

Exams
There will be two exams during the quarter. No make-up exams will be given for work or
personal conflicts. Also, no extra credit assignments to raise grade will be given during the
quarter or after the quarter has ended. As such, you need to plan yourself and your schedule
accordingly. Each of the two exams will account for 25% of the total grade. Review sessions
will be carried out by me upon request.

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Cheating
College and University plagiarism rules apply in full, without exceptions. Get more information
from http://www.uc.edu/conduct/Code_of_Conduct.html.

Tentative Schedules: Lectures, Assignments, and Readings.


All else constant, we will aim to cover the following during the quarter.

Week 1/Jan 5 and January 7: Introduction to Statistics: Getting Started


 The need for statistics, its definitions and organization (statistics, population, sample,
parameter, statistic).
 Descriptive statistics and statistical problem-solving methodology (describing the problem
-deciding on a method of data collection - collecting the data - classifying/summarizing the
data - presenting/analyzing the data - making the decision).

Week 2/Jan 12 and Jan 14: Descriptive Statistics


 Introduction to data collection and data organization
 Frequency distributions (raw data, data array, frequency distribution).
 Graphic presentation of frequency distributions (scatter plots, line charts, bar charts, pie-
charts, histogram, frequency polygon, normal curve, ogive).

Week 3/Jan 19 and Jan 21: Summary Statistics


 Measures of central tendency for ungrouped and grouped data (arithmetic mean, median,
mode, bias problem).

Week 4/Jan 26 and Jan 28: Summary Statistics (continued)


 Measures of dispersion for ungrouped and grouped data {range, mean absolute deviation
(MAD), standard deviation, variance}.

Week 5/Feb 2 and Feb 4 Summary Statistics (continued)


 Measures of position (Z-scores) and measures of position to describe dispersion (Inter-
Quartile Range).

Week 6/Feb 9: Review

Week 6/February 11: In-class mid-term exam, 11:00- 12:20 P.M.

Week 7/Feb 16 and Feb 18: Introductory Concepts to Probability Theory


 Basic considerations (sample space, event, assigning simple probabilities)
 Probabilities for compound events (conditional probability concepts, joint probability,
independence of events, addition rules, complement),

Week 8/Feb 23 and Feb 25: Probability Distributions


 Discrete random variables, probability distributions, expected values.

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 Binomial experiment and probabilities (combinations, probabilities, expected value,
variance, standard deviation).
 Poisson (binomial) distribution, normal (continuous) distribution)
 Calculating probabilities for the standard normal distribution (Z), computing probabilities
for any normally distributed variable, finding Z-scores from given probabilities.

Week 9/March 2 and March 4: Sampling and Sampling Distribution


 The need and advantages of sampling
 Sampling distribution of means (mean of the sampling distribution of means, standard
deviation of the sampling distribution of means, relationship between standard deviation
and sample size).
 Central Limit Theorem and the sampling distribution of the sample means

Week 10/March 9: Estimating Parameters


 Defining basic concepts
 Interval estimation of the population means (sampling distribution, interval width
considerations, level of confidence).
 Estimating the population mean (σ is known and sample mean is normal, σ is unknown
and n > 30, estimating the mean using the t-distribution).

March 11: Review

Final exam (University exam week)

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