Schedule

	Date	#	Topic(s)	Covered in class	Reading
Unit 1:			Thinking about scale
Week 1
Monday	3/31/25	1	Welcome to STATS 60!	What is statistics all about? What to expect from the course.
Wednesday	4/2/25	2	Thinking about scale	Contextualizing questions and ballpark estimates/Fermi problems	Chapter 5 of “Calling Bullshit”
Thursday	4/3/25	-	Discussion	Fermi problem contest
Friday	4/4/25	3	Cost/benefit analysis; Quiz in class	Cost-benefit analysis: preventative care for heart attacks.
Unit 2:			Probability
Week 2
Monday	4/7/25	4	Intro to probability	Modeling uncertainty. Probability in simple experiments.	Chapter 1 of “Blitzstein and Hwang”
Wednesday	4/9/25	5	Coincidences	How surprising is a coincidence? The birthday paradox.
Thursday	4/10/25	-	Discussion	The Monty Hall game - switch or stay?
Friday	4/11/25	6	Conditioninal probability; Quiz in class	Conditioning: incorporating new information. How dramatically it can change probabilities. P[A|B] is not the same as P[B|A]. Indepdendence.
Week 3
Monday	4/14/25	7	Bayes’ Rule	Bayes’ Rule, false positive tests.
Wednesday	4/16/25	8	Common mistakes in conditional probability	Base rate fallacy, conditioning without context, prosecutor’s fallacy, defense attorney’s fallacy, generalizing from a biased sample	“On the Psychology of Prediction” by Khaneman and Tversky; “Multiple sudden infant deaths – coincidence or beyond coincidence?” “Why are handsom men jerks?”
Thursday	4/17/25	-	Discussion	Conditional probability game show
Friday	4/18/25	9	Data collection day; Quiz in class	Design a survey question and collect data for our next unit!
Unit 3:			Exploratory Data Analysis
Week 4
Monday	4/21/25	10	Reasoning about sports with expectations	Guest lecturer Will Hartog. Some basic statistical models in sports and using probability to make decisions.
Wednesday	4/23/25	11	Data visualization	Common graphical visualizations of data, including pie chart, bar chart, histogram, scatterplot, box diagram, and time series. How to read each. Common visualization traps to watch out for.	Chapter 7 of “Calling Bullshit”
Thursday	4/24/25	-	Discussion	Practice visualization with AI-assisted programming and class data!
Friday	4/25/25	12	Fundamental summary statistics part 1: Central tendency; Quiz in class	Means and averages, median.	The shock of the mean
Week 5
Monday	4/28/25	13	Fundamental summary statistics part 2: Variability	Standard deviation, variance, quantiles	Statistical thinking for the 21st century, Chapter 3
Wednesday	4/30/25	14	When means mislead	Very different data with similar summary statistics—beware! Multi-modal data, skew, outliers, and their effects on summary statistics.
Thursday	5/1/25	-	Discussion	Analyze summary statistics of data with AI-assisted programming!
Friday	5/2/25	15	Fundamental summary statistics part 3: Correlation; Quiz in class	Correlation and trends, scatterplots, regression.
Unit 4:			Correlation and Experiments
Week 6
Monday	5/5/25	16	Sample size matters	Estimating a quantity with a random sample, large sample size improves accuracy of our estimates. Population vs. sample statistics. Standard deviation of the sample mean.	Statistical thinking for the 21st century, Chapter 7
Wednesday	5/7/25	17	The Normal Approximation	The Normal/Bell curve, confidence intervals, 68-95-99 rule
Thursday	5/8/25	-	Discussion	In-class experiment to explore effect of sample size.
Friday	5/9/25	18	Sampling and selection bias; Quiz in class	Uniform samples vs. biased samples. Common sources of selection bias.	Chapter 6 of “Calling Bullshit”
Week 7
Monday	5/12/25	19	Hypothesis testing and p-values	Statistical framework for testing, null hypothesis, alternative hypothesis, p-value, type 1 & 2 errors	Statistical thinking for the 21st century, Chapter 10
Wednesday	5/14/25	20	Hypothesis testing part 2, multiple testing	Testing multiple hypotheses, family-wise error rate, p-hacking, Bonferroni correction	Chapter 9 of “Calling Bullshit”
Thursday	5/15/25	-	Discussion	Hypothesis testing for facial stereotyping
Friday	5/16/25	21	Testing for correlation; Quiz in class	Permutation test for correlation coefficient, bootstrap simulation for estimating variability	Statistical thinking for the 21st century, Chapter 13.3-13.4
Week 8
Monday	5/19/25	22	Observational Studies and Randomized Experiments	Observational studies vs. randomized control trials, experimental design	Chapter 4 of “Calling Bullshit”
Wednesday	5/21/25	23	Potential Outcomes Model	Analyzing data from randomized controlled trials in the potential outcomes model, p-values via simulation
Thursday	5/22/25	-	Discussion	Analyzing a randomized controlled trial on the effects of sleep deprivation
Friday	5/23/25	24	More potential outcomes; Quiz in class	Normal approximation for potential outcomes
~~Monday~~	5/26/25	-	~~MEMORIAL DAY, NO CLASS~~
Unit 5:			Regression and Machine Learning
Week 9
Wednesday	5/28/25	25	Intro to machine learning	Prediction and fitting a model to samples, linear regression as a first example	Statistical thinking for the 21st century, Chapter 5.0-5.4 and Chapter 14
Thursday	5/29/25	-	Discussion	Review session
Friday	5/30/25	26	k-nearest-neighbors	Nearest neighbor model, classification, effect of coverage and selection bias on decisions	Chapter 8 of “Calling Bullshit”
Week 10
Monday	6/2/25	27	Generating text	Next word prediction, Markov text generators
Wednesday	6/4/25	28	Outtro
Finals week
Monday	6/9/25		Final exam