Appendix B — Schedule

This course is intended to be used for a 3-credit semester-long course at Iowa State University. But, the length of a semester will vary depending on when the course is taken, e.g. during fall/spring semesters the course is 15 weeks (plus finals) while during the summer semester the course is 12 weeks (including finals). The same material needs to be covered in both situations.

In addition, the current demographic of students in these two courses are likely to be different. The 15-week course (which is what is typically taught) includes both undergraduates (under the course number 4860) and graduate students who have typically taken, at least, STAT 5870. These undergraduates have typically taken our undergraduate theory sequence (STAT 3410 and 3420) and graduate students (typically those obtaining a Statistics Minor) may have taken STAT 5880.

In contrast, the 12-week course is being designed for the Master’s of Applied Statistics (MAS) online program. These students are only required to have taken some statistics course. Thus, their theoretical background will be lacking compared to students in the 15-week course. This will be relevant in the Model and Simulate parts where a theoretical background will aid understanding. The biggest difference will likely be seen in the simulate part where we discuss expectations and (frequency) probabilities. But, students in MAS may be currently taking STAT 5870 and thus have some understanding of (frequency) probabilities and (maybe?) expectations.

The schedules below try to articulate how these courses should be taught within the time frame for the semester whether the semester is 12 or 15 weeks long.

B.1 12-week semester

The 12 week semester is the typical summer semester at Iowa State University. The homework names given below are from the Gradescope names used in Spring 2024.

week	module	chapters	homework	exam/portfolio
1	Set Up	all	01-Intro	NA
2	Communicate	all	TBD	NA
3	Visualize	base R/ggplot2/syntax	02-ggplot2	NA
4		plots/customize/export	03-graphics	NA
5	Tidy	import/explore	04-tidy	NA
6		wrangle/pivot/join	05-TBD	NA
7	Program	objects/functions	11-functions	NA
8		logical/control	TBD	NA
9	Simulate	distributions/Monte Carlo	06-distributions	NA
10		estimators/intervals	12-monte_carlo	NA
11	Model	normal analyses/binomial analyses	07-analyses/10-ethanol	NA
12		simple linear regression/regression	08-regression	NA

B.2 15-week semester

The 15 week semester is the typical fall/spring schedule at Iowa State University. This 15 week semester includes an additional week for final exams since students are typically taking many classes. The schedule below is based off teaching the course in the spring of 2023 and spring 2024. The organization of content was changed quite a bit between these two years and thus the schedule is primarily based off spring 2024. The main difference is that instructors of STAT 5870 requested that the Simulate (and Program) part be placed in front of the Model part.

In spring 2023 and spring 2024, no exams were used, but the plan (if Jarad Niemi ever teaches the course again) are to incorporate exams. Thus, the schedule below will provide for appropriate exams to cover the material.

week	module	chapters	homework	exam/portfolio
1	Set Up	all	01-Intro	NA
2	Communicate	all	TBD	NA
3	Visualize	base R/ggplot2/syntax	02-ggplot2	NA
4		plots/customize/export	03-graphics	NA
5	Tidy	import/explore	04-tidy	NA
6		join	05-TBD	NA
7		join	05-TBD	NA
8	Program	objects/functions	11-functions	NA
9		logical/control	TBD	NA
10	Simulate	distributions/Monte Carlo	06-distributions	NA
11		estimators/intervals	12-monte_carlo	NA
12		processes	12-monte_carlo	NA
13	Model	analyses	07-analyses/10-ethanol	NA
14		regression	08-regression/09-glms	NA
15	Review			NA