MAT 241: Introduction and What to Expect (Hybrid)

Dr. Gilbert

August 19, 2025

Playing Along

Please play along…

  1. Open RStudio
  2. Create an empty Quarto Document in RStudio by navigating to File -> New File -> Quarto Document... using the menus.
  3. Choose to *Create Empty Document` and then remove the minimal YAML header to start with a truly empty document.
  4. Navigate to this Day 1 Activity notebook.
  5. Copy all of the lines in that document and paste them into your Quarto document, making sure that you are in the Source editor rather than the Visual editor.
  6. Play with that file as we work through these slides together.

If you don’t have R/RStudio yet, you can still play along here, but you won’t see the Quarto markdown and formatting items I mention.

What Are We Here For?

Location Loc Population MedianAgeMarriage Marriage Marriage SE Divorce Divorce SE WaffleHouses South Slaves1860 Population1860 PropSlaves1860
Alabama AL 4.78 25.3 20.2 1.27 12.7 0.79 128 Southern State 435080 964201 0.45
Alaska AK 0.71 25.2 26.0 2.93 12.5 2.05 0 Other State 0 0 0.00
Arizona AZ 6.33 25.8 20.3 0.98 10.8 0.74 18 Other State 0 0 0.00
Arkansas AR 2.92 24.3 26.4 1.70 13.5 1.22 41 Southern State 111115 435450 0.26
California CA 37.25 26.8 19.1 0.39 8.0 0.24 0 Other State 0 379994 0.00
Colorado CO 5.03 25.7 23.5 1.24 11.6 0.94 11 Other State 0 34277 0.00

We’ll ask questions and use data to investigate their answers.

What Are We Here For?

We’ll ask questions and use data to investigate their answers.

Territory Bands Population Happiness
Afghanistan 2 37466414 2.404
Albania 7 3088385 5.199
Algeria 16 43576691 5.122
Andorra 2 85645 NA
Angola 8 33642646 NA
Argentina 1907 45864941 5.967

We’ll encounter two data sets today.

  1. We’ll explore potential associations between WaffleHouse restaurants and divorce using the wafflehouse data from Richard McElreath’s Statistical Rethinking text.
  2. We’ll use the metal data set from the same text to examine potential associations between the number of heavy metal bands originating from a country and that country’s overall happiness score.

Syllabus

Before we jump into working with the data, let’s cover the usual beginning of semester course logistics.

Major Highlights from the Syllabus: I’ll ask you to read the syllabus, but the most important items are on the following slides.

Instructor and Office Hours

  • Instructor: Dr. Adam Gilbert

    • e-mail address: a.gilbert1@snhu.edu

    • Office: Robert Frost Hall, Room 311

    • Office Hours (please visit!):

      • Wednesdays 9:00am - 10:30am
      • Thursdays 9:00am - 10:30am
      • Fridays 1:00pm - 3:00pm

Required Resources

First and foremost…everything is free!

Grading Scheme

Grade Item Value
Interactive Notebooks (~17) 30%
Exams (2) 40%
Final Exam 30%

Explanations of Grade Items

  • Interactive Notebooks: Completing these on time is crucial, as they’ll be the way you are exposed to material and practice with it.

    • You should expect to have two of these to complete each week
    • You’ll generate a hash code at the end of each notebook and submit that hash code using a Google Form (see BrightSpace for the link)

  • Exams: We’ll have two exams during the semester – each one will have two parts.

    • Problems and Concepts Exam (75%): Will look more like a traditional exam where you complete problems, but will occur on MyOpenMath (90-minute time limit, two attempts).
    • Practical Exam (25%): Will present you with a real data set and ask you to perform a scripted analysis using R/RStudio and building a Quarto Document.

  • Final Exam: The final exam will also come in two parts.

    • No Tech, No Notes Concepts Exam (~67%): Will take place during our class meeting in Week 16
    • Problems Exam on MyOpenMath (~33%): Will be completed on MyOpenMath, like your previous exams (120-minute time limit, two attempts)

Brightspace

  • Announcements
  • Gradebook
  • Go to the webpage for everything else

Course Webpage

I’ve built a webpage to organize our course content.

  • Syllabus

  • Tentative timeline

    • Weekly discussion topics and required interactive notebooks
    • Optional supplementary discussion slides
    • Assignment due date reminders

What’s Class Like?

  • This particular section of MAT241 is operating under a hybrid format.

    • This means that we’ll have just one 75-minute class meeting per week (Tuesdays) and the vast majority of the learning and work for this course will be done outside of class time.

    • I’ll expect you to work diligently between class meetings, attend my student hours (office hours), and reach out on Slack (see BrightSpace for information on joining) when you have questions or need help.

      • In a hybrid course, seeking help immediately is critical – please do not wait until the next class meeting to get your question answered.

    • Depending on your level of preparation, you should expect to spend 6 to 10 (or more) hours per week on this course outside of class time.

  • If you would be more comfortable in a section which meets twice per week, there is one available this semester from 11:00am – 12:15pm in RF211 with Dr. Duryea.

What’s Class Like?

Because we are only meeting once per week, our class time together will be valuable.

  • In general, I’ll plan for the first 45 minutes of each class meeting to be devoted to questions, review, and tangential topics driven by student interest.
  • The final 30 minutes of class time will be devoted to previewing the material you’ll encounter as you work through the week’s notebooks.

A Note on AI Use

The use of AI, such as chatGPT or copilot, in MAT241 will be discussed in class, particularly prior to exams.

  • While AI will not be completely prohibited, its use will generally be restricted to helping with broken code in R.
  • The reason for taking this position is that MAT241 is a foundational course in which we are learning and applying concepts from applied statistics.
  • Relying on AI for statistical calculations and interpretations at this stage will rob you of the opportunity to understand and discover the intricacies involved in statistical analysis.

Previewing Use of AI in MAT241: AI use is permitted only for troubleshooting code you’ve written.

  • In the case that AI is used, please plan to save and provide your transcript along with your submission.
  • If AI use is suspected and a transcript is not provided on request, then an academic integrity inquiry will be submitted via the University’s formal channels and a formal investigation will determine the outcome.

A Road Map to Our Semester

We’ll be discussing a lot of material in MAT 241. Here is a very generic road map of what we will discuss. Starting now.

  • Introduction to Data

  • Introduction to R

  • Descriptive Statistics (Exploratory Data Analysis, EDA)

    • Numerical and tabular summary statistics
    • Data visualization
    • Interpretations and communications of EDA

  • Just Enough Probability

    • Binomial Distribution
    • Normal Distribution

  • Inferential Statistics

    • Confidence intervals for capturing a population parameter
    • Hypothesis tests for testing claims about a population parameter

  • Contexts

    • Single means or proportions
    • Comparisons of means or proportions across two or more groups
    • Associations between a numerical variable and one or more other variables numerical variables (linear regression)

The WaffleHouse and Metal Data

Let’s get out hands dirty…

  • Open RStudio back up and take a look at that Quarto Document

We’ll overview the following items:

  • Quarto document structure

    • The YAML header
    • Code chunks
    • Markdown/text cells
    • The Source versus Visual editors

  • Rendering a Quarto document to an output file format

  • Using R to examine data, specifically to construct plots

    • Again, I’m assuming no background, so our goal today is just to make small changes to existing plots – hopefully becoming interested in what’s possible

Closing

  1. Render your notebook and make sure that the sections we’ve updated look as you intended them to.

    • Make any updates you like and re-render the notebook.

  2. We got a first taste of R today, and we’ll continue to learn more.

  3. Don’t worry if you didn’t completely understand all of the code from today’s Quarto Document or if you feel like you couldn’t write that code on your own – we’ll be starting from scratch!

  4. Homework: Complete and submit the Topic 1 and Topic 2 notebooks by 11:59PM on Friday, September 5. These notebooks will give you a first introduction to data and R, respectively.

    • Be sure to see me immediately if you are having difficulty with setup.