Homepage of EXST 7005 Lab, Spring 2006

The lab grades for all students have been posted to the web page, and the second SAS Quiz is graded and available for students to pick up from my office. As results indicate, you all did exceedingly well in lab this semester, and I am personally very happy for you all. If you have questions, comments, or corrections for the posted grades, please email me and let me know.
Thank you all for a wonderful semester - you are all excellent students, and it has been a pleasure and honor to lead you in this lab. I wish you all luck on your finals, for both this course and your other courses. If you have questions about material for the final, email me and I will either answer your questions or see about arranging a study meeting.
For students interested in learning more about SAS programming, or those who simply are looking for a class to take this summer and whom would like to take a class with me as their TA, the Department of Experimental Statistics will be offering a course on SAS programming during the Summer term. This course was originally going to be taught by Dr. Moser, and has since been passed to Dr. Geaghan to teach, and Dr. Geaghan has appointed me as his TA for the lab portion of the class. The course is listed as EXST 4087, named SAS for Statistics, and is available for 3.0 hours of graduate credit. The schedule seems set for Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 1:40 to 4:10. As of 8:00P.M. 5/3, there were 8 enrollment slots open.
As was mentioned in lab this week, the Department of Experimental Statistics does not conduct student evaluations of graduate teaching assistants, they are only done for faculty. Dr. Geaghan has informed me that the student evaluations for him will be done in class tomorrow, Thursday 5/4. On the back side of this evaluation is space for written comments, that you can use (if desired) to make comments about your opinion of my performance this semester as your TA. Alternatively, if you feel especially strongly that you'd like to let Dr. Geaghan know of your opinions, you can speak with him directly.
This Friday, 5/5, I am in a pre-proposal meeting with my committee from 9:00 until the meeting finishes. As such, I will be unable to hold my usual Friday office hours, and am hereby officially canceling them for this Friday. I will be in the office, and hold regular office hours next week for those needing help for the 7005 final.
The instructions and data files (all .CSV) for Quiz 2 have been posted to the web page. There are three seperate data files, for which you will need to save to the disk, and use on the Quiz. The instructions are the same for this quiz as for Quiz 1. It is your responsibility to turn in the Quiz in on time, and I WILL NOT accept any late Quizzes, as discussed in the Quiz Instructions. Extra time on the quiz will be granted, of course, to those registered to receive this academic adjustment. Please remember to turn off all electronic devices, or at least silence them or place them on vibrate, when you enter the lab out of respect to the students around you. For those whom have permission to complete the Quiz out of lab, I will post the Quiz on-line Wednesday afternoon, after all other students have completed the Quiz. It is expected that all students who take the Quiz in lab WILL staple their Quiz hand out in its entirety to the top of their Quiz with their names on the first page. Failure to do this WILL result in an automatic deduction of 5 points from their total Quiz grade.
Some labs may not have been graded yet - this is obvious for Lab 10, which is due this week. If you do not get one of your past labs during the Quiz, please discuss the issue with me AFTER the end of the quiz. It is possible, however, that your lab may be in a different pile in my office graded, if you turned in a lab during a different section than the one you either normally attend or are registered for. Out of respect for the students working on their Quizzes, I will not entertain questions regarding the return of labs during the Quiz. If I do not have your lab graded, you can come by my office after 5/8 to pick up your missing labs, Lab 10 and Quiz 2. If I need to extend this date due to not having everything graded, I will post an update to the web page. In addition, you will be able to check your lab grades on-line after 5/10, and should, just in case I miss entered a grade sometime during the semester. It is your responsibility to verify your grades, I will not do it for you.
As you all can likely imagine, there is a considerable amount of graded labs to be turned back to you this week. This is also the week of the second SAS Quiz, so there is a potential for delays to the start of the Quiz, caused by the amount of time required to turn back all the labs. To avoid, or at least alleviate, this problem, I will be doing something different this week. To turn back all the labs, I will quietly go around to each student as you work on the quiz, and return the labs to you. If I can't connect the name on the lab to the student, I will ask that student personally for their name, and bring them their labs. You do not need to, and should not, stop working on the quiz to get your labs back.
This past week, the Department of Experimental Statistics suffered a terrible tragedy. Our department chair passed away unexpectedly; he was a teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend to Dr. Geaghan and myself, and he will be missed. I would strongly urge and encourage all students to be considerate and respectful in this time of loss. This is one of those times in life when you can choose to treat others as you would like to be treated in times of tragedy - don't waste it.
Some past 7005 and 7015 labs about simple linear regression have been linked to on the web page. As was mentioned earlier, these labs are for your benefit, since simple linear regression will be covered on the 7005 final. These labs, however, are optional, and will neither be collected nor graded. I will, however, answer questions about them via email, or during lab and office hours.
Labs this week will be very short...say, about 30 minutes. For the last 10 days (right through Break, making it a fun, enjoyable, and relaxing week), I have been sick with the upper-respiratoryu infection which some truly generous individual (whom will promptly feel just as bad as I do, if I find out who it was) decided to spread to me. I can not hold lab, since I can not speak for any length of time without bellowing a cough loud enough to make people wonder if I will rupture a lung. I tried to find a substitute, but was unable to find anyone who could help. I have posted the final lab, Lab 10, to the web page (along with the relevant data sets). However, since lab this week is cancelled, Lab 10 will not be "officially" passed out until next week, and will not be due until the last week of class. The second and final SAS Quiz will be delayed until the last week of class as well. Hence, we will not have the last week of class off from lab, a situation I am disappointed with as much as you all likely are. Lab 9 will still be due in lab this week, pending a floor vote by the students (i.e. if the majority aren't finished with Lab 9 at time of lab, I will delay it's turn-in date until next week).
For the Tuesday afternoon section, a fellow instructor in the EXST department has requested that I post a notice to the announcement section of the web page to let you know that a class will now be held each week on Tuesdays from 1:30 to 3:30 in our lab room. His class was previously held in a different room, but has been moved due to remodeling work that is being done in his former classroom. So, he and I would both greatly appreciate it if you would politely and quietly wait in the hall outside our lab room until his class is finished. I realize and sympathize with the slight difficulties this may present, since most of you came to lab early to work on the previous week's assignment and review the new assignment, but this situation is unfortunately unavoidable, and I hope I can count on all of your understanding.
As a follow-up to the issue of the lost USB thumb drive reported by one of the students, that drive was subsequently found. That student and I would like to extend our gratitude to those caring students whom took steps to help find the drive, it was much appreciated, and thank you.
IMPORTANT: I have just received word that a student in our lab lost his USB thumb drive/memory key, possibly during lab last week. As I'm sure anyone who uses one of these drives is aware, so much of our material is stored on these drives that losing one can be a calamitous circumstance. If anyone has found a misplaced thumb drive in lab, both he and I would be most appreciative if it could be returned. If you have found an ownerless drive, please email me and we can make arrangements to get it to him. As an aside, this should be noted as further evidence that back-ups should always be made of important data and documents - between how small these drives tend to be, and viruses and malware, you should always keep back-ups, and keep them safe.
Dr. Geaghan has requested I make available an additional Lab 11, to cover simple linear regression. This lab will be posted, and available for students to complete on a voluntary basis. I will write it and answer questions about it, but will not collect or grade it. It will be posted to the lab web site, available to those interested to complete independently. This lab is being made available to assist students with studying for the final exam, since regression will be covered on the final.
I have assigned each student a randomly-generated number for identification purposes in lab assignments. These numbers are not identifiable to individual students, and will be used for confidential posting of lab grades to the web site at the end of the semester. I will, under no circumstances, ever reveal to any other individual the identities of students and their associated confidential numbers. If a student should decide to reveal their confidential number to any other individual, they do so willingly, and waive any and all legal rights to academic privacy to the individual(s) he or she reveals their confidential numbers to, and to any individuals who may also learn the student's identity through the student's decision to reveal their confidential numbers. These numbers will be written into the inside of each student's quiz when graded, and should be confidentially maintained by each student for purposes of ascertaining their final lab grades at semester's end.
As promised, I have graded the first SAS quiz, and will be turning them back to you in lab this week. In general, I think you all did very well, and perhaps better than some of you thought. Most students scored above 20 out of 25, and no one scored below 12 points (those who did score less than 12 were bumped up to having 12 points, since so few did so that those scores were believed anomalous scores by those who, for whatever reason, simply had a bad test day). The grading for the quiz was decided as follows: all five problems were accounted 6 points each, meaning that four of the five counted towards the 25 points for the quiz, with an additional 6 points of available extra points, which will be applied to recipient's lab scores at the end of the semester. On the second page of each student's quiz, are three bits of important information. The first, written and circled in blue ink, is an anonymous student grade identification number - this number will be used to identify lab grades to each student at the end of the semester, and this anonymous information will be posted to the lab web page at semester's end for students to check their course grades. The second, written and squared off in red ink, is the total score awarded on the quiz out of 25 total points, and an indication of how many extra points were given. The third, written in red ink, is the break-down of the scores awarded for each individual problem each student turned in work for. Any questions about these materials, or if you have questions about the grading of the Quiz, should (unless the issue is of a general nature, relevant to the other students in the class) be taken up with me privately.
For those few individuals who had permission by me to complete the first SAS Quiz outside of lab, the quiz is now on-line. I expect that individuals will follow the "honor system" and follow the Quiz Instructions similarly posted on-line. Quizzes completed out of lab are due at the next week's lab meeting, late labs will be docked points. If you have questions, drop me an email.
The instructions for taking the SAS Quiz 1 are provided on this page, as a link by the data for Quiz 1. You may view these instructions now.
The data file required for completion of Problem 4 on SAS Quiz 1 is linked. You will have to click on this link, and save the file to a location on your disk for SAS to access.
The new, official time that I am serving on the StatHelp service is Wednesdays, 12:30 to 1:30.
As a reminder, the first SAS practicum lab Quiz will be held in lab next week. Unless you have made arrangements with me, personally and prior to the commencement of the Quiz, you are expected to complete the Quiz in lab, within the two-hour time-frame of lab. I will, of course, honor special needs, given the provision of proper documentation. This Quiz will be open-book/open-note, and will be comprehensive in coverage of material presented in Labs 1 through 3. For students having permission to complete the Quiz outside of lab, I will expect you to keep within the posted guidelines, on the honor system. For those students, I will post the Quiz on-line for you to complete, after both sections have completed the Quiz, on Wednesday afternoon.
The lab for this week is different from our usual labs; it was written by another, previous TA, in a previous semester of 7005. It is, though, a fairly good lab, which introduces well the material I wanted to teach this week. This is being done as a stalling tactic, to avert potential problems later on this semester, which would result from introducing complicated statistical techniques in lab a full two weeks before they are introduced in class by Dr. Geaghan. This represents a change of plan to the course schedule, and effectively pushes each lab assignment back a week. To compensate, the lab on linear regression will be made optional, and will be posted on-line for students to complete independently - this optional lab will not be collected or graded. The first SAS Quiz will still be held in lab next week, as planned - the change made effective this week to the lab schedule will not effect the Quiz schedule.
The schedule for the departmental StatHelp service have been determined. As explained this past week, StatHelp is a free service run by the department, for students and University employees to come and ask statistical questions. All departmental teaching assistants are working this service, including myself. There are three times each week the service is available: Tuesdays 4:30 to 5:30, Wednesdays 1:30 to 2:30, Thursdays 4:30 to 5:30, all in Room 39 of the Ag Administration building. I will be working the Wednesday section, save occasional scheduling changes. This constitutes an extra, unofficial office hour for my students to see me. If you need to see me about something, and want to meet with me Wednesday, come to room 39 and (if I'm not there) ask to see me and say you are in EXST 7005. Whomever you so tell this to, will put you in touch with me.
I want to notify you of a previously-unknown issue with at-home installations of the SAS software. It has come to my attention that the SAS software can not be installed on computers running the Microsoft Windows XP Home operating system. SAS can only be installed on computers running Microsoft Windows XP Professional edition. Why this works the way it does is beyond me (or, for that matter, the EXST computer technicians), given the proported internal structure similarities between Pro and Home, but this does seem to be the case. ...If you ask me, it's Billy Boy trying to force people to shell out the extra bucks to buy Pro...sorry guys. SAS does work on XP Pro though.

Welcome to the Spring semester of EXST 7005 lab. I am Mr. Ryan J. Machtmes, your TA for 7005 lab. This web site is where you will find the lab assignments and data sets each week, links to the syllabus, and important comments and statements of relevance to lab, posted by myself. Any and all students enrolled in the distance course, EXST 7087, need to email me to identify themselves as being in this course; you may submit your name and email address to me at rmacht1@lsu.edu ASAP - you are expected to participate fully in this lab, as a portion of your course grade (you may inquire with Dr. Geaghan about this, but he will tell you the same).

This page last updated on January 16, 2006; by Ryan J. Machtmes, e-mail rmacht1@lsu.edu