Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session

Lecturer

Prof. Dennis Mc Laughlin

Prerequisites

18.01, 18.02

Description

Class periods will generally be divided into 40 minutes of lecture and 40 minutes of related hands-on computer work using laptops available in the classroom. In the beginning of the semester recitations will provide computer programming background for students without previous programming experience. Later, these recitations will be used for more in-depth virtual experiments and data analysis exercises and for discussion of homework problems.

Assignments

The class includes several homework sets and three quizzes held during the two hour recitation periods. The grade will be based 40% on homework and in-class exercises and 20% on each of the three quizzes. The lowest homework grade will not be counted. There will be no final exam.

References

The primary text is Devore, Jay L. Probability and Statistics for Scientists and Engineers. Duxbury Press, 2000. (Noted by D in the readings section.) Students not familiar with MATLAB® should also consider purchasing one of the many introductory texts on this programming package. A reasonable choice that is easy to read and moderately priced is Etter, D. Introduction to MATLAB® for Engineers and Scientists. Prentice-Hall, 1996. (Noted by E in the readings section.)