Paul E. Johnson

2020-07-28

Greetings:


I've accumulated a lot of lectures, I plug them into the gaps when
needed. 

http://pj.freefaculty.org/guides

That is everything I have, a mirror of all of my teaching materials.

Each semester, I update and re-organize.  


Students ask me whether it is "difficult." 
High school algebra is a required level of mathematical competence.
If you had calculus and remember it, that will be a leg up.
If you took calculus and forgot details, that is still beneficial.
We don't invest too much time in theorems and proofs, but it
is important to be able to draw a line from a formula.

It may seem that way, but
most of the students who work through it until the end say it is not
unreasonably difficult. People who have more systematic social science
preparation are more comfortable, I suppose, but energetic novices can
do well.  We provide the step-by-step information (it is freely
available, all the time, on the Web). We don't do an awful lot of
matrix algebra, calculus, or computer programming. It may seem like a
lot to some students, but I assure it it is not.

In case you'd like to learn more about what will be involved in the
course, I've prepared some material and I suggest you should review
it.

http://pj.freefaculty.org/guides/stat/Regression/Pre-RegressionChecklist/preregression-checklist.pdf

You should exert yourselves to prepare your
personal computers. Install R (free software), and at least one
reasonable editor. I still use Emacs with ESS to interact with
R, but many Windows users do well with Notepad++ (and the NPPTOR
plugin). Many Mac users do well with the editor called R.app.
There is a newer program called "R Studio" which I actively
dislike, but I cannot deny it is popular with people under
the age of 30.  

In the CRMDA at KU, we made instructional videos in installation.
At the moment, due to forces beyond my control, those documents
are unavailable. I'm trying to get them back. The next-to-last
version of the install video for Windows is available on YouTube.
I may upload newer one there just for fun, if I can get access
to it. Look for "Start R" in there.  Ignore part about installing
Perl.  That's not needed any more. 

At the bare minimum, 
please try to install the R program
(http://www.r-project.org). Since "R Studio" is free for the
moment, you might as well install that.