Your To-Do List

Summary: If you keep up with the work, you’ll succeed in Statistics class. But it can be hard to remember to cover everything. Here’s a handy checklist. Follow it after every class to prepare for the next class, and you’ll do well.

Advice: With a once-a-week class, you may be tempted to leave everything to one or two monster study sessions. But that’s a really bad idea. Instead, try to do some class work every day, or at least four days a week. That way you’ll keep statistics fresh in your mind and you’ll get the most out of the time you spend studying.

In this printed copy, links to other documents are underlined. If you visit the original of this page, on the Web at <http://BrownMath.com/stat15c/todolist.htm>, you’ll find live links.

After class, review:

• Look carefully at any graded papers that were returned to you. Make sure you understand any mistakes you made, and that you now know what to do instead.
• If there was a quiz, check the quiz solutions as soon as possible. (They’re almost always posted during the quiz.) If there’s anything you didn’t understand, review it and get help if necessary.
• Thoroughly study the chapter that was covered in class. Use the definitions and summaries to make sure you’ve got everything.

  Remember, when you read a textbook you do it with your pencil and calculator, not just your eyes, and you work through every example.(See How to Read a Math Book and How to Study Math.)

• Check your notes or the Web page for optional materials that explain some difficult points or give extra examples.
• Do at least the assigned homework problems. (See How to Work a Math Problem.) If you have trouble with any of them, you need to do more problems of the same type. You can ask me questions in email, but in-person help at the Baker Center is probably more effective.

  Your homework is working papers, so it doesn’t have to be pretty, but it has to be done. And you should show your work just as you would on a quiz.

  Check your answers. If your answer doesn’t match mine, find your mistake and fix it. (Or find my mistake and report it.)

• Make sure your crib sheet is up to date. (Using it for the homework may reveal some gaps.)

Before class, prepare:

• Complete any lab or project (or take-home quiz) that is due. Or if one is on the horizon, try to get started on it so you don’t have to do it in a big rush.
• Skim-read the chapter that will be covered. That means to read the Summaries and briefly look at each page. Your goal at this stage is not to learn all the material, but rather to get a general sense of the topics that we’ll cover.
• Practice any calculator procedures in the chapter. Yes, we’ll go through them in class; but in class you want to be following the concepts, not fumbling to find keys.
• (optional) Print the chapter to use in your note-taking during class.
• Set out the materials you’ll need for class: your textbook, your calculator, your crib sheet, a pencil and eraser for the quiz, and paper for taking notes.