For Online Students: Certificate

Anyone who wishes to receive certificate, should submit final exam within one week. Also, take any missing quizzes, and submit midterm. These will be the bases for assessing pass/fail in the course and for issuing certificate.

Some More Details on Final Exam

The way I have made quizzes and exams in the past (and same method will be used on Final) is the following. I look at the lecture slides -- each of them present and try to explain a single (or a small number) of concepts. I make up a question which tests understanding of the concept explained on that slide. So if you go over all the slides for the lectures, and make sure that you understand what is being said on all of them, you should be in good shape for the final exam.

The labs just provide numerical and hands on practice for this same thing -- no additional or new concepts are introduced in the labs, just asking the student to do the same computations which have already been carried out in the lecture slides.

FInal Exam

Final Exam will be in-class written exam. It will cover the whole course. The pattern will be similar to the questions that have been asked in the online quizzes. For the lectures for which there was no online quiz, the pattern will be similar to the types of questions worked out in the labs.

The Exam is scheduled for Monday, June 30th, 9:30am to 12:30  on what is likely to be the first day of Ramazan. Study hard and do well. 

Quiz Uploaded

Contrary to my plans, I could not upload quiz to quizstar on Friday. NOW I have uploaded a quiz on Lecture 12 -- Basically on Binomial Probabilities, just a little while ago. This quiz will be open for 48 hours, until Wednesday. Please take this quiz within time period allotted

Quiz on Binomial Probabilities

The bad news is that for some reason, my lecture on monday was not taped. So you will only have access to my slides and lecture notes, which are being put up on website in the usual place.

On Wednesday Waqar conducted practice session on solving Binomial problems. Perhaps worse news is that On Friday a quiz will be put up on QUIZSTAR regarding binomial probabilities. This will follow the pattern of questions drilled by myself as well as Waqar. I will post a note on this blog when the quiz becomes available for taking.  

Exercises on Lecture 12

Wednesday Class will be on exercises on computing the Binomial and Poisson probabilities. Several problems are given in the lecture notes, which are available from LINK. Also, the videotaped recording of the lecture is available from this same link.

Lecture 12: Probabilities & Discrete Random Variables

I am back from Umrah -- I prayed that all of my students may become assets for the Ummah, and the key to the creation of the changes needed for creating new directions.

Unfortunately, I did not have time to finish recording the 12th Lecture. I have just finished writing it up, and have posted it on the website: See Lecture 12. I will prepare the slides, but will not have time to record the lecture and so I will deliver it live tomorrow (Monday) morning at 9:00 am, insha Allah. 

Lec 10: Quiz

Quiz on lecture 10 has been available at Quizstar, and will remain open till Monday midnight.

Midterm + Schedule for Next Week

My goal in giving tests is NOT to judge students or compare or evaluate. The test is a LEARNING tool -- students are motivated to work hard to solve it, and thereby to understand the material covered. During grading, we have discovered several areas of weakness, which vary among students. Accordingly, by Friday, my TA's UZMA, IRFAN & WAQAR will mail INDIVIDUALIZED MAKEUP QUIZZES to each student. Each student will be asked to REDO calculations and computations that he/she did wrong, and will be given a little additional work that needs to be done to ensure that he/she has the background necessary to solve the problem.

UZMA: Please coordinate this work, assigning each of the three roughly equal share of quizzes to handle, and providing email addresses of the students to send them these individualized assignments.

ASSIGNMENT/QUIZ due SUNDAY midnite April 27th. This is in replacement for this weeks (two) quizzes which are not being given. The assignment is to pick a pair of variable from the WDI data set such that one is related to the other, and DRAW a graph of Y versus X in the manner shown in the Lecture 9 on BIVARIATE relationships. Comment on the nature of this relationship -- what does it tell you about the real world? Please learn how to download and handle the WDI data set in order to get variables for your study. Make sure that every student chooses different variables.  TA's please help students to get data they want.


NEXT: I am going to Jeddah for one week, leaving this Sunday 27th Apr and arriving back on 4th May. In my absence, WAQAR & IRFAN will be taking the lecture 11 and conducting lab on monday and wednesday as usual.
WAQAR & IRFAN: Please design quiz on Lecture 11, on the pattern of the previous quizzes. UZMA will LOAD the quiz onto QUIZSTAR. The pattern is as follows -- Look at the Lecture Slides, and ASSUME that students have these slides in front of them. MAKE questions to test comprehension of the material being presented on the slides.
UZMA: Please provide them with previous quizzes, and tell them how to get access to quizstar so that they have a better idea about the type of quiz they are supposed to design. You will make the final edits and fix and finalize the questions before loading onto quizstar -- this quiz should be available to students on 2,3,4 MAY.

Technical Issues

Some students said that sound was bad on Lecture 10. I just listened to it, but did not find any problems.  You do have to TURN ON the sound from within powerpoint. Go to the SLIDE SHOW tab, and click on Set Up Slide Show. In this menu, there is a check box marked: Show Without Narration. If this is checked then there will be no sound. If you UNCHECK it, then the slide show will play with the narrations. 

Unit 2: Prob & Stat

Congratulations to the class for finishing the first unit on DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS. This is a unique course, based on concepts and techniques not currently available anywhere in the world. I know that the class has worked hard, and learned a lot of valuable skills.

The second unit starts on Monday. The first lecture provide an entirely new approach to probability theory, currently not available anywhere else. I have just revised and put up the new lecture (anyone who downloaded or viewed/listened to the old version should get the new one. It has a few additional slides with additional material. Similarly the files for the lecture and the lab have been updated and put up recently. This can be downloaded from:  LECTURE 10: RANDOM DRAW 

The lecture will be on the usual time 9 to 10:30 on Monday morning. One of my students will be available to explain. Students can also put up questions on the blog about things they do not understand.

The lab will be done on Wednesday, and probably there will be a combined quiz on lab & lecture on Friday.

Lecture 9: Comprehension Quiz

Lecture 9 Comprehension Quiz is now available at QuizStar and the deadline of the quiz is Sunday Midnight.

Lecture 9: Bivariate Relations

Lab on Lecture 8 contains a Do It yourself section at the end which will be taken as the calculation quiz, so there will be no separate calculation. Those who did lab at PIDE already emailed their solutions to Irfan. Those outside PIDE can solve and send their labs to Uzma.

Next Lecture 9 on bivariate relationships will be delivered on Monday between 9 to 10:30 as usual. Comprehension Quiz on Tuesday, and Lab on Wednesday.

A missing comprehension quiz on histograms will be posted by Uzma to be solved during the weekend. The midterm itself was the replacement for the calculation quiz on histograms. 

Lab 8: Density Estimates

This morning, we will do Lab 8 at PIDE from 9 to 10:30AM. Other students can do lab on their own which has been posted on the webpage for Lecture 8. The lab, and associated data set RAINFALL02.xlsx is attached to the bottom of the page. The Computational Quiz for this lab should be available by Friday morning on Quizstar. 

Lec 8: Comprehension Quiz

Lec 8 Comprehension Quiz is now available. You need to open Excel file lec8comp while solving the quiz. which is available at:
https://sites.google.com/site/introstats4muslims/textbook/density

Schedule for April 7th to 14th

We had a disturbed schedule in the past few weeks because of the necessity of going back over material that students had not learned. Hopefully, everyone is caught up by now, and has submitted the midterm. For any special cases having difficulty, I can arrange tutoring sessions -- if they come to me (or to my TA's) for help -- but NOT if they copy and pretend to understand what they dont.

From this week, we should resume regular schedule. Monday, all should watch lecture 8 on density estimation. This is an improvement over the histogram. The class from 9:00 to 10:30 will have my TA's Irfan and Waqar present, and they will explain any issues that are not clear to the students. Then students should READ the textbook chapter: Lec08 Density.docx -- this is attached at the bottom of the webpage for this lecture:
https://sites.google.com/site/introstats4muslims/textbook/density
You may want to watch the lecture again after reading the text -- this time you should be able to follow and understand it much better.

Tomorrow, you should be able to take the Comprehension Quiz on this lecture.  Now we are going to try to take you off bottle feed, so you will only have one day - complete this quiz by midnite on tuesday

On Wednesday, you will have the computer lab, in which you will learn how to make density plots for data in EXCEL, with varying windowsizes.

On Thursday, you should practice these computer techniques on your own, and redo the lab exercises to make sure that you understand how to do it on your own without any help from anyboy.

On Friday you should take the Computational Quiz on Lecture 8. THEN you can rest Sat Sun and prepare for the same schedule next week which will cover Lecture 9.

Clarifications about MIDTERM

1. Question 3 refers to ALL countries -- you should look at the mean and median for all countries -- that will tell you something about what has been happening globally.
2. For question 5, pick ONE small binsize for all the data -- A binsize is TOO small if every bin contains only one or zero points. At the very least, many bins should contain TWO points for very small binsize. A binsize to TOO large if all the data is in one bin. At the very least there should be three or more nonempty bins. 
3. One important aspect of data analysis is to find out any peculariaties in the data. Look at the countries with maximum value and minimum values, and try to explain why some country is high and why some are low. Also look for any unusual events, like countries which had rapid change (relative to other countries. You will get points for pointing out UNUSUAL aspects of your data. EVEN more points if you can explain why this unusual aspect happened because of real world events.
4. Whereas we have been quite lax about deadlines in the past, the deadline on the MIDTERM will be strict. You must submit via email to uzma (uzma.economist@gmail.com) by MIDNIGHT on SUNDAY. Late exams will not be accepted. I have a record of who downloaded their data sets when, and I note that people are still downloading! Excuses will not be accepted. Even 24 hours is enough for finishing this exam -- my estimate is that it should take no more than 3 to 4 hours of work.

Evaluation of Midterm

Midterm will be evaluated on TWO aspects. One part is just technical knowledge. You should know how to compute mean median, draw graphs, and do all of the technical EXCEL manipulations that have been taught in the past few weeks. In your WRITEUP, you should explain HOW you did your calculations, this will help in ensuring that you get a good grade. Your answers will also be checked for accuracy and correctness.

The SECOND part will be evaluating your UNDERSTANDING of how the data set relates to REAL world. For this, you will have to do some research. What is the series you are working with? For example, if it agricultural pollution than it would be high in countries which have high agriculture. EVERY sentence which shows some understanding of how the data sheds light on REAL world issues -- Like Country X is an outllier because it is a purely agricultural economy -- or that African countries score low on this criterion because they dont have industrialized ecoomies -- Country Z is an outlier because it is a purely oil based economy. Sentence which show how data set helps us understand real world issues will be given marks. To write such, you will have to do some reading about how your data relates to the real world.

Instructions for MIDTERM

A: For students who are NOT at PIDE, they can take ANY data series from the WDI data set and work the midterm on this data series. I have posted SOME data series on the website in an EXCEL spreadsheet -- download WDIData.xlsx from MIDTERM page. They can submit midterm by email to UZMA like others, and they will also be graded like others.

 B: Remember that data sets will require some cleaning, by deleting blank rows and columns. That will make it easier to do the spreadsheet calculations. DELETING a row or column is DIFFERENT from deleting data in that row (which is easy). DELETING the row makes the entire row DISAPPEAR from the spreadsheet. In EXCEL 2007 and 2010 there is a menu item on top right hand side which you can click on after highlighting the row or column. To highlight row or column just CLICK on the COLUMN NAME (Letter) or the ROW NAME (number). After that you can delete the row.

 C: HEADING LINE of the data has been removed. This is ANNUAL DATA which starts with c oluimn E being 1960, F is 1961, G 1962, ..., O is 1970, Y is 1980 and so on. It goes upto about 2010 which is column BC - but each series has different amounts of data. You should label the data with these headers so that you KNOW which years your data is for. In many cases, data is available only for a few years (not for all). So delete the BLANK years, and also delate the BLANK countries. Note that blank countries will not usually bother the EXCEL functions, which work correctly -- however, sometimes you need to take into account the SIZE of the data set, so you need to count how many non-blank entries there are.

 D: AFTER doing calculations in EXCEL, you must copy over all necessary information to the WORD document you submit as solution. In the word document, EVERYTHING required for the answer MUST BE PRESENT. YOU CANNOT SAY look at the EXCEL spreadsheet for the solution to this. YOU must copy relevant diagrams and figures into the word document. EXCEL spreadsheet must be submitted separately, so that we can verify the calculations. PLEASE USE YOUR OWN NAME as the name of the documents you submit -- both for WORD and for EXCEL spreadsheet.

Data Sets for Environmental Students

Data Sets for Health Economics Students

Midterm TODAY - Wednesday 2 April 2014

MIDTERM exam is available from following webpage -- Download Midterm  {Click on this link, and then download file named midterm.docx from the bottom of the webpage}. Data set for each student is available from the same page. Note that this is the original data directly from the WDI data set. YOU MAY HAVE TO CLEAN THE DATA. This means deleting blank rows, or deleting countries for which there is no data.

Lec 6: Lab Quiz is open

Lab Quiz is now open. Data for this quiz is available on ISM06CalcQuiz.xlsx , which can be accessed from this link.

https://sites.google.com/site/introstats4muslims/textbook/lec05-boxplots

Lec 06: Comprehension Quiz

Lec 06 Comprehension Quiz has been uploaded. Please also note that on Wednesday (tomorrow) lab session will be conducted (on Box plots) from 8:30 to 11:00 am.

Lab 5 Quiz

Lab 5 Quiz is now available. Data set (ISM05Quiz_irfan.xls )is available at https://sites.google.com/site/introstats4muslims/textbook/lecture-4

LAb 3 Quiz

Lab 3 Quiz is now available. Data used for this quiz "quiz2lab3.xlsx" is available at https://sites.google.com/site/introstats4muslims/textbook/lec02?pli=1

New Quiz on Leb 4 is Available

New Quiz  based on Lab  4 is now open. Data file named Lab4quiz2.xls is available at https://sites.google.com/site/introstats4muslims/textbook/lecture-3

Quiz on Lab 2 is Now available.


Quiz on Lab 2 is  now available.  Quizzes on other labs will also be posted soon. this quiz is based on slightly different data set with minor modifications in questions. So please be careful while attempting Quiz.

Schedule Changes -- Lab Tomorrow

TO: Students of Intro Stats Class:

Due to a conference tommorrow, I will not be able to deliver the live lecture on Wednesday morning at 9:00. I have postponed it to THURSDAY, 13th March, 2014 at 2:00PM.

I have also asked ASADUL - ISLAM, my Ph.D. Student, to come in at 9:00 AM tomorrow to help students with the Lab Exercise. This is OPTIONAL for those students who need help -- however, looking at the scores on Computational Quiz, many student seem to need help. This class will be held in one of the labs, my secretary Zaheer is arranging for the lab. 

Asadul Islam will not be doing any lecturing. Students who need help with the Lab exercises should go to the lab and start working on their own -- at any point at which they have difficulty, they can ask Asadul Islam for help. He will try to provide help with the EXCEL and with the exercises. Remember that the point is to learn to do these exercises on your own, not to find the answer to the question from someone else.

Lab05 Is Now available

Weekend is a good time for working on the new ISM05Lab.docx which is now available from the webpage for Lecture 5: Measuring Dispersion and Variation. Download it from bottom of page. You will also need data in the EXCEL spreadsheet ISM05Data4Lab to solve the exercises. 

Self Paced Version of Course: Now Available

I have created a new class on QUIZSTAR, with name:  "Intro Stats: SELF PACED". This has all quizzes open at all times, with any number of retakes. People who wish to register for the course now, can sign up for this class and do the quizzes from the start, at their own pace. 

Computational Quiz 4 is Open:

Computational quiz of lecture 4 is open and will remain open till Tuesday midnight. Please make sure to complete it before that. Only on special request quiz will be opened for those who could not finish it, due to some serious issue.

Lab 04 on Representing and Benchmarking

ISM04LAB.docx is now available on the main website for this course. Download it from LINK. -- also download associated data in ISM04_data_lab.xlsx from the bottom of the same webpage.

If sufficient students request it, we can arrange a lab session on Monday (at regular class time 9:00 to 10:30, where someone can help students to do the labs. 

Discussion: Aim to learn or to "earn"? what is useful knowledge?

During my seminar class i shared with my students my understanding of the problems with logical positivism and how it effects all western secular knowledge. This initiated a discussion with the students in which they shared their feedback and two concerns they had of their understanding of the welcome address of Dr.Asadur Rehman.  I think this forum is the place to share the discussion and my response to that, so please share your views on this as well to do to the discussion. 

1. Question about science:

One student (keeping name anonymous) raised a confusion about Dr.Asad Zaman's welcome address that we should not learn scientific knowledge but how can we do without that and that is the basis for all the knowledge that has progressed today? I responded that my understanding of what Dr.Zaman is saying is not that muslim students should stop learning science as that goes without saying, and that is already going on and will continue to go on in the future, but we don't need the entire world population pursuing science. Also what Dr.Zaman is urging is what is neglected and an area which needs work and this is looking at the problems caused by the failures of logical positivism. Definition of what is science changes in every moment of history. The work that needs to be done is what is stressed –for e.g. using an example used by Dr.Zaman elsewhere in class , the knowledge that is useful versus knowledge that is useless, an automobile manufacturer may know how every part works but he may never be able to drive the car if he doesn't learn the skill to drive.

So the ongoing question for tafakur for me in my field of studies is what is “useful knowledge” at any one particular moment of history and how to strive towards learning and sharing “useful knowledge” versus “useless” one.

2. Question about learning to earn: 

Another point from Dr.Zaman which a very good student of mine raised was why should we not focus on “earning” we need to earn to look after out families and those around me. To this my response is to aim to make higher aims than simply “earning” and if you do so you will automatically earn in the process. That is my understanding and experience please comment and share your views or different understanding of these two questions raised in your mind, or if they have been cleared at this stage of our class feel free to share your process too. 

LEC 3 Computational Quiz is Open

Computational quiz of lecture 3 is open and will remain open till Tuesday midnite. Please make sure to complete it before Tuesday mid night.Those students who have not attempted quiz by that time (whether pass or fail) will not be allowed to enter LIVE CLASS on Wednesday Morning..

Failures Deleted

Total Poiints of Lecture 3 Comprehension Quiz are 15. 8 points or above is more than 50% and passing. I have deleted ALL scores of 7 or below, so all students who failed now have another chance. I understand that the format of this course is ENTIRELY NEW and VERY DIFFERENT from anything the students have experienced before. Furthermore, some students are struggling with EXCEL which they have not used before. So I am trying to make it very easy for them. Please remember that this is a SPACE AGE course. Once you learn how to learn from a course like this, you can get an education in anything you want. It is all on the internet in very high quality format online courses.
UPDATE: I have again deleted all scores which were failures on second attempt -- (but not on first attempt). That means that ALL who failed still have a chance to try and improve scores so that they can reach 50%

ALSO NOTE THAT I have updated and improved the LAB03 recently, so if anyone downloaded an old copy, please get a new copy of ISMLAB03.doxc from the webpage for Lecture 3.  

The Magnificient Seven (or Seven Samurai)

Congratulations to the following seven students for obtaining PERFECT scores on the Computational Quiz. I have awarded them a VIRTUAL chocolate. This VIRTUAL chocolate can be converted into a real chocolate if claimed from me at a time I am in a good mood.

1. Mahwish Alvi
2. Hina Irshad
3. Rafat Mahmood
4. Zobia Neelum
5. Naveedur Rahman
6. Salman Tahir
7. Zunaira Zareen

DO (or REDO) Computational Quiz TODAY

I have extended the deadline for the computational quiz by one day. I have also DELETED ALL FAILING SCORES. This means that all students who failed can try once again. Total points on quiz are 21, and 1 to 010 is less than 50% and hence failing scores. Scores of 11 or above are passing scores.

Please make sure to take this quiz today. For the rest of the week, the outline of tasks is available at the MOOC PAGE

DEADLINE for computational quiz: BEFORE live lecture

Due to a mistake, the deadline was set wrong on the computational quiz. For the live class, it is ESSENTIAL that students have done the work prior to coming into class. Accordingly, the DEADLINE for the second quiz has been set to Wednesday morning just before the class starts. I want to have the scores and performance of students before me before the lecture so that I can assess their strengths and weaknesses.

By the way, congrats to all fifty plus students (live & online) -- all have passed the first comprehension quiz.

2nd Attempt Allowed for Lecture 1 Comprehension

2nd Attempt Allowed for Lecture 1 Comprehension

Those students who did not perform well (got marks 10 or less ) in their first attempt, are now allowed to re-take the Quiz.

2nd Attempt Allowed for Lecture 2 Comprehension

Total points on Lecture 2 Comprehension Quiz are 31. Pass marks are 16 (which is more than 50%). At request of one student, I have allowed a second attempt to ALL students who have failed on their first attempt. This means that I have DELETED scores of 15 points or less -- so all such students CAN take the quiz one more time, as a fresh attempt. If someone with higher score wants a second try, they can make special request to Uzma Awan - uzma.economist@gmail.com. However, I would recommend that they concentrate on working on the Lab Exercise and solving the Computational Quiz -- this has been set to allow two attempts by all students.

Lec 02 Comprehension Quiz Deadline extended 24 hours

Since only about 13 students have completed the quiz by now, I have extended the deadline by ONE DAY. Further extensions can be obtained by sending email request to my TA Uzma Awan at uzma.economist@gmail.com. However, you will fall seriously behind if you dont complete the tasks on schedule. ALSO, it will help a lot if you READ the chapter for each lecture. The textbook reading for Lecture 2 is called ISM02Lect.docx and can be downloaded from the WEBPAGE for LECTURE 2.

The initial timeline and steps to take the course were posted in the first post on this blog. ALL of these steps are now organized on a separate page devoted to this MOOC -- check this page to see in sequence what you are supposed to be doing as a student in this course. Note that ONLINE students will receive certificate for completing this course if they do all the assigned work and complete the assigned quizzes. 

Class Schedule

Today is LAST day to complete Lecture 2 COMPREHENSION QUIZ. on Quizstar. The TIMING and SEQUENCE of student activities required for the course is listed on MOOC Page. After taking the comprehension quiz, student should download and complete ISM02Lab.docx and ISM02 Lab.xlsx from LINK. After completing the lab, students must take Lec02 Computational QUIZ on QUIZSTAR -- for this quiz, you will need data provided in file ISM02 DATA 4 Computational quiz. This file can be downloaded from LINK for lecture 2. 

Recordings of Live Lectures available

The first and second lecture were delivered live and via livestreaming:

Lecture 1: Introduction & Special Features of Course  on Monday 10th February, 2014
Lecture 2: What is the difference made by an Islamic Approach to the subject? Wed. 12th Feb 2014

Links to recording are available below:

http://asadzaman.net/online-lecture/introduction-to-statistics-for-muslims/

Future live recordings will also be posted on this page.

Second Quiz is Open

Second Quiz is open and will remain open till Saturday. Please First watch Second lecture and then solve Quiz.  lecture is available at this link http://asadzaman.net/comparisons-part-i-indexing-facts-and-fiction/

QUIZ RETAKE

Those students who have less than 10 marks in Quiz 1, and wanted to retake the Quiz, or those students who could not register due to any reason, and want to attempt Quiz1, are requested to write a written explanation of what happened, why they could not perform well in Quiz and also request for retake. After analyzing their explanation we will allow them to retake the Quiz. Please email at: uzma.economist@gmail.com

All students who registered the course must Follow the blog to get the latest updates.  Use the button on the right hand side upper corner of the blog which says "Follow by email". Enter your email address in the blank space underneath this sign, and you will become a follower of the blog. All posts to the blog will be emailed to you. 

Link for Live Class: Wednesday 12th Feb

Link for Live Class: Wednesday 12th Feb

Today Live class will be from 9:00 to 10:30 am and Live Streaming will be available on the following link. http://pide.org.pk/live.html

Registration & Mechanics.

1. To get all the latest updates, information about class quizes, you must follow the blog.

http://introstat.blogspot.com

To follow by email, use the button on the right hand side upper corner which says "Follow by email". Enter your email address in the blank space underneath this sign, and you will become a follower of the blog. All posts to the blog will be emailed to you.

2. Go to Quizstar website 

http://quizstar.4teachers.org

 sign up as student and register yourself. after registration search the course with key word "asad zaman" or even "zaman" will also works. 

once you find the course " Introduction to Statistics" go to class and start Quiz 

3. Every body is supposed to watch the lectures and attempt the Quiz before live class. as some student registered late, so for this reason Quiz will remain open on wednesday as well. But for next lectures, comprehension Quiz will be closed on Saturday and Lab Quiz will be closed on Tuesday. The live class on wednesdays will be a discussion class in which it will be assumed that everyone has seen the lecture and taken the two quizzes for each lecture. 

Link for 1st Lecture: Monday 10th Feb

The first lecture introduced the special features of this course, and the reason for its name. It has been recorded and is available for listening from the following link:
http://pide.org.pk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=690

Intro Stats Course Starts Today 10th February

The course will start today. I will give a LIVE lecture today (Monday 10th February 2014) in the A.R. Kemal Room at PIDE. Students in nearby areas (QAU) are permitted to attend (if there is space available in the room). This lecture will be recorded and made available -- apparently it will also be livestreamed.

NOTE: at 10:30am -- lecture completed & recorded; recording will be available on PIDE.org.pk website and on my personal website asadzaman.net SOON. This was an introductory lecture, explaining the special features of the course. One student made an excellent suggestion, leading the idea that the title of the course should be: "Introduction to Statistics -- taught in Islamic Style" -- because our goal is not to restrict audience to Muslim students only, but rather to utilize Islamic principles and methods of teaching and learning.

ALL STUDENTS should register as FOLLOWERS of this blog. That way all messages posted to this blog will automatically get emailed to them. All information about this course will be posted to this blog.

The first quiz is  Lec 01 Islamic Knowledge: Comprehension Quiz, WHICH IS NOW OPEN for taking on QUIZSTAR. You only get one chance at this quiz, and it is open till wednesday. In general there will be TWO quizzes on each lecture. One will be lecture comprehension quiz and second will be a calculation quiz.

Some students are taking this as a class on Environmental Valuation Techniques. They will be given extra tasks, and I will set up a separate blog/website for them. They are required to READ the Wikipedia article on Contingent Valuation. Please submit a list of names and email adresses and contact info (mobiles) to my secretary, to receive more information about this.

ONLINE Course Starting Feb 10, 2014: INSTRUCTIONS

Introduction to Statistics

Teacher: Dr. Asad Zaman

COURSE OUTLINE: Course based at PIDE, Islamabad, Pakistan, from February 10th, 2014 for the Spring Semester. Register as a FOLLOWER on this blog, to receive updates & course info.

One LIVE class will be held on Wednesdays 9:00am to 10:30am in Junior Commons Room at PIDE. Students at PIDE will be required to attend. YDF from Planning Commission taking the course are welcome to attend. This class will also be available via LIVESTREAMING to those who are taking the course ONLINE only -- this will be recorded, and made available later for those who cannot watch it live. All other portions of the course will be delivered online.  

Although this course only covers basic concepts, it does so in a new way, so that even people with advanced training in statistics will find many of the ideas to be very new, and different from what they have been taught. The basic course materials are organized on the following website:

https://sites.google.com/site/introstats4muslims/

This course will be organized on the style of an “inverted classroom”. This means that lectures will be viewed by students outside class, and discussions will be held in the classroom. The live-stream sessions will NOT be organized lectures; rather they will be general discussions where the instructor (myself) will focus on asking questions designed to assess student comprehension of the materials they are supposed to have studied outside of class. If I find any important gaps, I will provide additional taped lectures (to be viewed outside class) to supplement the existing lectures.

The format and structure of this class will be new experience for nearly all the students. ORDINARILY, students expect that if they attend class and follow & understand the lectures, this would provide about 75% of the work needed to pass the course. In this class, the once weekly live class will cover only 10-20%. More than 80% of the work will be done by students on their own outside of class.  A detailed explanation of what the students are required to do is listed below.