Announcements
New! Grade distributions for final exam posted.
New! Solutions to the final exam posted. In the usual place with the same user name and password as for homework solutions and other exam solutions.
It was announced in class that, in addition to 3 sheets of notes and formulas you can bring the handout on brand name distributions to the exam and use it for reference during the exam.
Grade distributions for second midterm posted. Also the Grade distributions for first midterm are still there.
Exam Solutions for the second midterm posted. (Same user name and password as for homework solutions).
All homework assignments for the rest of the semester are no longer tentative. They will be as stated on the Homework Assignments page.
The link to the homework solutions for additional problems 10 and 11 was broken, now fixed.
The hint for problem 3.6.10 that was on this page has been moved to the bottom of the homework assignments page.
Solutions to homework assignments 4–8 posted in the usual place with the usual password.
New! Answers to questions about the midterm asked after class Friday.
- What does the exam cover? This has always been on the matrial covered page. The midterm is not cumulative (the final exam is cumulative). It covers only the material covered since the first midterm and on the homeworks already handed in. As I said in class, do not expect that all the problems will be very like problems on the old exam because there is a lot of material covered, too many subjects for five or six questions, which is all that can be done in 50 minutes.
- The material covered does include the handout on expectation, including problems about when sums and integrals, especially expectations and normalizing constants, exist. In fact, problem 6 on the old exam was about this.
- The general info has always said that you may bring one sheet of notes (both sides) to the midterm. Since the midterm is not cumulative, you shouldn't need the sheet you used for the first midterm.
- If you look at the instructions for the old final exam, you see that three sheets are allowed (typically the ones you used for the two midterms plus one for material new since the second midterm, although you may make new ones if you wish). We will follow the same rule for the final exam (not the midterm) this year.
Yet another change to the handout on expectation, which makes three since it was handed out. None are critical. You can keep the copy you've written notes on.
- The use of Jensen's inequality has now been clarified, the unnumbered displayed equation below (1.8) holds only when X is non-constant and positive-valued, and this has been stated.
- (announced previously) The property used in class, if |X| ≤ |Y|, then the existence of E(Y) implies the existence of E(X), has been added (Property 5 on page 2 modified).
- (announced previously) Fixed a typo (cut and paste error) in the definition of symmetric about a (p. 15).
Someone complained about seeing &radic 2
in
additional problem 4. This is lossage
in Microsoft Internet Explorer. It doesn't implement web standards.
The solution, as noted at the bottom of the homework page
is to get a non-sucky web browser (anything but Microsoft) or read the
homework
problems in PDF.
Not exactly new, it's been on the web all along, but I call your attention to the exams and solutions page for the last time this instructor taught this course. Of course, this year's exams will be different from those, but they will be written by the same person and cover the same material, although not necessarily exactly the same bits of material.
New Material Covered page has what material is (or has been) covered each day and exactly what material each exam covers.
New exam dates section below.
For those of you who may have been having trouble viewing these web pages with Internet Exploder, the problem is that IE is simply broken. It violates web standards. Use any good browser (Firefox, Opera, Safari, Konqueror). Nevertheless I did manage to fix the worst bug (pages didn't scroll in IE) by consulting the book CSS Mastery, which explains how to work around this and other Microsoft lossage. For those who must use IE (to get your spyware and viruses), keep reporting problems. I'll see if they can be worked around.
Exam Dates
| Exam | Date and Time |
|---|---|
| First Midterm | Wednesday, October 11 |
| Second Midterm | Wednesday, November 15 |
| Final Exam | 10:30am-12:30pm Saturday, December 16, 2006 |
The final exam time is set by the U.
Quotations
… and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days
when you might get un-birthday presents —
Certainly,
said Alice.
And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!
I don't know what you mean by glory
,
Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. Of course you don't — till
I tell you.
I meant there's a nice knock-down argument for you!
But glory
doesn't mean a nice knock-down argument
,
Alice objected.
When I use a word,
Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,
it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.
The question is,
said Alice, whether you can make words mean so many
different things.
The question is,
said Humpty Dumpty, which is to be
master — that's all.
— Lewis Carroll (Through the Looking-Glass)
A set is a Many that allows itself to be thought of as a One.
— Georg Cantor
Jokes
There are two kinds of people in this world: those who divide everything into two kinds and those who don't.
There are 10 kinds of people in this world: those who understand binary numbers and those who don't.