Session 2: The Language of Hypothesis Testing; Interactions

• Hypothesis Testing

  • Hypothesis testing (slides, including a few repeated from Session 1)
  • The "Coin-Tossing" story
  • Notes on hypothesis testing
  • An hypothesis-testing tool
  • Practice exercises on hypothesis testing with answers
  • Life and death, and statistics

• A challenging and important question


• "What's the difference between what I learn from the significance levels, and from the beta-weights?"
  Read here.
• Intermission


• A quick look at estimation and presidential polls (slides)
• A Primer on Polls (optional fun reading)
• Presidential election polls (with simple executive summary; the rest is optional)

• Summary: Hypothesis testing
• Summary: Regression analysis

• Regression modeling: Structural variations (1)
• Interactions (slides)
• Notes on interactions (using motorpool dataset as example)

• Group Assignment (evening, after Session 2)

  • Work through the "Caligula's Castle" dataset. At the least, load the dataset, create the product variables, and discuss the interpretation of the regression results.

• Practice (for the intervening month)
  • "Caligula's Castle" dataset and description
    • Optional background readings on Harrah's Entertainment Inc.
    • Questions
    • Answers
  • "Hans and Franz" dataset and description
    • Questions
    • Answers
  • Evanston Wadgets - Delivery times