STA 4504-5503: CATEGORICAL DATA METHODS

Syllabus (PDF file)

Instructor

Alan Agresti, Department of Statistics

Office Hours

204 Griffin-Floyd Hall: Monday and Wednesday 3-5 pm, and by appointment

Contact Information

Phone number: (352) 273-2981, e-mail aa@stat.ufl.edu

Teaching Assistant

Quan Tran, 117D Griffin-Floyd, e-mail quandtran@stat.ufl.edu, office hours Monday, Wednesday, Friday 2 - 4 pm and by appointment.

Homework assignments

1. Due Friday, January 15: Chapter 1, exercises 1-4, 8, 12

2. Due Wednesday, January 27: Chapter 2, exercises 2, 3, 5-8, 12, 17-19

3. Due Friday, February 5: Chapter 2, exercises 29, 33-36, 39; Chapter 3, exercises 1, 2, 22ab

4. Due Friday, February 12: Chapter 3, exercises 5, 9, 11-13, 16; Chapter 4, exercises 1, 4

5. Due Friday, February 19: Chapter 4, exercises 2, 8, 11, 16-17, 28, 37

6. Due Friday, March 5: Chapter 4, exercises 19, 21, 23, 24; Chapter 5, exercises 4, 15

7. Due Friday, March 19: Chapter 5, exercises 19, 22, 30; Chapter 6, exercise 1

8. Due Friday, March 26: Chapter 6, exercises 3, 5, 6, 7, 12, 22abd

9. Due Friday, April 2: Chapter 8, exercises 2, 4, 20ac; Chapter 9, exercise 3

10. Due Friday, April 9: Chapter 9, exercises 4, 7, 18, class exercise on transitional model for insomnia study

11. Due Wednesday, April 21: Chapter 7, exercises 5(a-c), 6, 7, 27

Outline of course notes:

Chapters 1 through 9 notes (pdf file)

Data Sets:

You can get SAS for your home PC with a one-year license through the Software Licensing Services.

The CIRCA handout "SAS for Windows" is useful for getting started. It can also be helpful to use a primer such as "The Little SAS Book: A Primer" by L. Delwiche and S. Slaughter or "SAS System for Elementary Statistical Analysis" by S. Schlotzhauer and R. Littell.

The SAS/STAT User's Guide contains documentation about procedures. For procedures pertaining to categorical data analysis, go to SAS Online Support and click on the SAS/STAT User's Guide and then on "Introduction to Categorical Data Analysis Procedures". There you can find all the detail you need about PROCs we use in this course, such as PROC GENMOD, PROC LOGISTIC, and PROC FREQ. For examples of using SAS for categorical data analyses for many data sets in the first edition of the text "An Introduction to Categorical Data Analysis", see the useful site set up by the UCLA Statistical Computing Center. SAS also has a specialized manual available for purchase, "Categorical Data Analysis Using the SAS System" by M. Stokes, C. Davis, and G. Koch (2nd ed., 2000).

R is free software, popular among statisticians because of its power and flexibility but harder to learn to use. It is an open source version of S-Plus, and many S-Plus functions also work in R. At website for Dr. Chris Bilder the link to R has examples of the use of R for most chapters of the text. For more detailed information, a comprehensive manual prepared by Dr. Laura Thompson shows how to use R and S-Plus to conduct all the types of analyses presented in this course (although the organization in her manual follows my more advanced text, Categorical Data Analysis). You can get a copy of this at Laura Thompson S manual for CDA. Thanks very much to Dr. Thompson and to Dr. Bilder for providing these helpful resources, which I highly recommend to anyone using R in this course.

For other useful information and links about R and S-Plus, see the homepage of the UF professor Dr. Brett Presnell. Dr. Presnell also has a page on R for Categorical Data Analysis from when he taught STA 4504-5503 that has many examples of the use of R. Some of these are for data sets in the text for this course. For yet other details about R, see the R web site . This includes a link to manuals, such as "An Introduction to R", and to the archives in the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN).

At software for CDA I have summarized where to go on the SPSS ANALYZE menu to get access to various methods discussed in the course. You can get a student version of SPSS at the bookstore or a one-year license through the Student Home-Use Program.

At software for CDA there are some links. For examples of using Stata for categorical data analyses for many data sets in the first edition of the text "An Introduction to Categorical Data Analysis", see the useful site set up by the UCLA Statistical Computing Center.

Here is a sample of the types of questions (pdf file) you will see on Exam 1. There will be a combination of true-false or multiple-choice questions as well as problems. Some problems may come directly from the homework exercises. The problems put main emphasis on interpretation, rather than calculation. A formula page is attached to the back of the exam so you do not feel it necessary to memorize formulas. Here is a sample of the types of questions (pdf file) you will see on Exam 2. There will be some problems like these but also many true-false questions to test your understanding of the concepts.


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