This section of STAT 510 is not intended for PhD students in Statistics. (PhD students should enroll in section A1.) MS students considering a future PhD or plan to take the follow-up course STAT 511 should consider Section A1, but should first consult with an advisor.
This web page will serve as the syllabus for the Fall 2020 version of STAT 510 Section B1. Please read it carefully. You should become familiar with these policies. To do so, you will likely need to return to the syllabus several times throughout the semester. After the start of the semester, this document may continue to be updated. Any such changes will be announced.
This Fall 2020 version of the course is online.
Please refer to the course staff by their given names. For example, your instructor is named David. If you refer to the staff as “Professor” or “TA,” we might refer to you as “student,” which seems odd.
Course Catalog: Distributions, transformations, order-statistics, exponential families, sufficiency, delta-method, Edgeworth expansions; uniformly minimum variance unbiased estimators, Rao-Blackwell theorem, Cramer-Rao lower bound, information inequality; equivariance.
The above description is based on the Illinois Course Catalog. This version of the course will cover the first twelve chapters of Larry Wasserman’s “All of Statistics.” As such, topics will include:
For more detailed information on coverage, please see the table of contents for All of Statistics.
Larry Wasserman’s (LW) “All of Statistics” will dictate the content and pace of the course. The two additional required texts, ER and JM will be used for supplemental reading and additional exercises. The optional textbooks are not needed to complete the course but listed because CB is a highly referenced text and HMC covers the prerequisite material.
Each of the three required text are freely available. In particular, LW can be found via the Illinois library:
In addition to the textbooks, you may find the following “cheat sheet” useful:
Students are expected to have completed STAT 410 at Illinois, or equivalent coursework which would amount to a two-semester calculus-based mathematical statistics sequence of courses.
We will use several forms of communication for this course. The website will be the one-stop-shop for all course information. Compass will be used to send announcements which will also be sent via email.
If you would like to communicate with the course staff, our preferred methods of communication, in order, are:
For Fall 2020, all office hours will be held online via Zoom.
The office hour schedule is always subject to change. As such, the dates and times will be posted each week along with the course materials.
If no students are present in the last half hour, the course staff may depart early. If you know that you cannot join until that time, but will be attended, please send us an email letting us know you’ll be there and we will stick around!
Office hours are by far our preferred forum for discussing individual specific questions. In office hours, our response time will be literally instant. Also, since we are both present in the same physical location (or together on Zoom), follow-up is both expected, and easy. Using electronic forms of communication such as Piazza or email will have a slow response rate and a much lower communication bandwidth. In other words, please come to office hours!
If you would like to schedule a private meeting outside of regular office hours, please send an email suggesting two possible times, on two different days. (A total of four suggested times.) We have a preference for time-slots directly adjacent to current office hours. Please also indicate a brief agenda for the meeting. Requests to schedule a meeting at a time less than 24 hours in the future are unlikely to be granted.
This course will use Piazza for some course communications.
IREADTHESYLLABUSPlease register your account with your University email.
The course staff will attempt to check Piazza at least once a day, thus you can often expect a response within 24 hours, except for weekends. If you need a quicker response, you should consider office hours as an alternative.
The course staff would strongly prefer the use of Piazza to GroupMe or similar services not officially supported by the course. The course staff feels that a GroupMe may exclude members of the course, whereas all are welcome on Piazza.
Private posts have been disabled. Any private matters should be discussed over email where your identity is known and private. Some anonymous posting is disabled. (You may post anonymously to your classmates, but not the course staff.)
Additional Piazza policy can be found in a pinned post on Piazza.
STAT 510 will follow a strict email policy. Instead of email, consider Piazza! Any quick, non-private communication should take place there.
If you’d like to email the instructor or course staff, consider the following:
If you choose to send an email, you must adhere to the following three rules. If you do not, your email will be considered less import than other emails which follow the rules and response time will be slower.
@illinois.edu email address or appear as sent on behalf or an @illinois.edu address.
## good
[STAT 510] Grade feedback question## bad
## improper format
## non-descriptive subject
[stat510] hi## bad
## improper format
[STAT510] Grade feedback question## bad
## improper format
## subject too long
## information found in syllabus or website
[STAT 510]when is the first exam and what is covered on the exam?If your email is sent between 9:00 AM Monday and 11:59 PM Thursday, and you follow the above directions, we will try our best to respond within 24 hours. Questions about an assessment sent the same day the assessment is due will likely not receive a response before the assessment is due. Plan accordingly.
| Role | Name | |
|---|---|---|
| Instructor | David Dalpiaz | dalpiaz2@illinois.edu |
| Teaching Assistant | Shen Yan | shenyan3@illinois.edu |
With the exception of exams, all course assignments are due at 11:59 PM, Central (Champaign) time, on the listed due date.
There will be 10 homework assignments throughout the semester. Specific homework policy will be included with each individual assignment.
Homework will be submitted through Gradescope. Please verify that you have access to the course. If not, please email the instructor to be added.
There will be two exams, a midterm (Exam 01) and a final (Exam 02). Both exams will be proctored through the use of the CBTF Online.
Conflict exams will be available and scheduled through the CBTF. Details of this procedure to come.
Except for the exams, all deadlines are at 11:59 PM, Champaign time, on the listed day.
| Assessment | Deadline |
|---|---|
| Homework 01 | Friday, September 4 |
| Homework 02 | Friday, September 11 |
| Homework 03 | Friday, September 18 |
| Homework 04 | Friday, September 25 |
| Homework 05 | Tuesday, October 6 |
| Exam 01 | Monday, October 12 |
| Homework 06 | Friday, October 30 |
| Homework 07 | Friday, November 6 |
| Homework 08 | Friday, November 13 |
| Homework 09 | Friday, November 20 |
| Homework 10 | Friday, December 4 |
| Exam 02 | Thursday, December 17 |
Compass will be used to distribute grades and announcements.
Gradescope will be used to submit assignments. Links and details forthcoming.
| Assessment | Percentage |
|---|---|
| Homework | 60 |
| Exam 01 | 20 |
| Exam 02 | 20 |
The homework sub-score will be the average of the 10 homework assignments.
| A | B | C | D | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plus | 99 | 87 | 77 | 67 |
| Neutral | 93 | 83 | 73 | 63 |
| Minus | 90 | 80 | 70 | 60 |
The instructor reserves the right to lower, but not raise, grade cutoffs. However, this policy should not create an expectation that this will happen. Asking for a change in cutoffs will make any change in cutoffs less likely.
Grading in the course is not competitive. There is nothing (other than some statistical realities) that would prevent the entire class from receiving a grade of A.
If you feel an assignment was graded incorrectly, you have one week from the date you received a grade to discuss it with the instructor. After one week, grading is final except for exceptional circumstances. You may not simply ask for a re-grade, but instead must justify to the instructor why the grading was done incorrectly. By disputing any grading, you agree to allow the instructor to review the entire assessment in question for other errors missed during grading. Requests must be sent via email. (Failure to follow the email policy will result in your request being denied.) Grade disputes over trivial points will likely be met with frustration. (A grade on a single assignment is not reflective of your overall grade in the course. The generous buffer points should more than make up for a single point deduction on a single assignment.)
All grade disputes must be discussed with the course instructor. Teaching Assistants and Course Assistants do not have authority to modify grades.
The official University of Illinois policy related to academic integrity can be found in Article 1, Part 4 of the Student Code. Section 1-402 in particular outlines behavior which is considered an infraction of academic integrity. These sections of the Student Code will be upheld in this course. Any violations will be dealt with in a swift, fair, and strict manner. In short, do not cheat, it is not worth the risk. You are more likely to get caught than you believe. If you think you may be operating in a gray area, you most likely are.
Under no circumstances should course materials be provided to Course Hero, Chegg, or any similar for-profit website. The course staff will seek the harshest possible academic integrity penalty for any students who do so.
The university values your safety. Please read this document or watch this video.
To obtain disability-related academic adjustments or auxiliary aids, students with disabilities must contact the course instructor and the Disability Resources and Educational Services (DRES) as soon as possible. To contact DRES, you may visit 1207 S. Oak St., Champaign, call 217-333-4603, e-mail disability@illinois.edu or go to the DRES website.
To ensure appropriate accommodation is provided in a timely manner, please provide your Letter of Accommodation during the first week of class. Letters received after a relevant assessment has been administered will likely cause logistical issues that could result in an inability to accommodate.
Please also be aware of the note above about accommodations in the CBTF.
For some thoughts on teaching philosophy, some explanation of policies, and some general tips for success, please see The Extended Syllabus.
The instructor reserves the right to make any changes he considers academically advisable. Such changes, if any, will be announced. Please note that it is your responsibility to keep track of the course proceedings.