LEBANESE INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY

MATH 310: Probability & Statistics for Scientists and Engineers (3 Cr.)
COURSE SYLLABUS
Semester: Fall 2011-2012
Section: A
Instructor: Nicolas Al Ashkar
Email: nicolas.ashkar@liu.edu.lb
Class Time: TTH: 12:30-13:45 p.m.
Office Hours: MW 12:30-2:00 p.m.
Room:105
Course Description and Objectives: The course is intended to provide you with the basic
probabilistic and statistical concepts with related computational and analytic skills for three
main purposes:
- To become an integrated part of your scientific education.
- To give you an adequate ability for comprehending and interpreting many nondeterministic situations.
- To serve as an essential prerequisite for other subjects or future studies.
- To appreciate the wide range of applications of such concepts to real life situations.
- By the end of the course, it is expected that you should:
- Have developed a sense of appreciation and to the importance of the overall purpose
of probability and statistics.
- Have acquired a consistent knowledge of the basic concepts of the subject matter.
- Be able to select an appropriate probabilistic model for a given experiment or
phenomenon, calculate the probabilities of various events of interest, and find the
distribution for a random variable.
- Have acquired a basic understanding of the important probability distributions and
their applications.
- Be able to compute all relevant statistics from a sample, know the important sampling
procedures, read and interpret descriptive statistical displays.
Course Textbooks: Probability and Statistics for Engineers and Scientists, Walpole and
Myers, 8th Ed., Prentice Hall.
Recommended Readings:
1) Mathematical Statistics with Applications Mendenhall, Duxbury.
2) Discrete Probability, Gordon, Springer.
Hand Calculator and: Any Scientific calculator is recommended.
Course Outlines by Topic:
Topics
Title
1
Introduction to Statistics an Data Analysis
o
Role of probability
o
Sample Mean
o
Measures of Variability.
o
Discrete and Continuous Data.
o
Graphical Modeling

# Hours

1.5

Probability
o Sample Space
o Events.
o Counting Sample Points
o Probability of an event.
o Additive Rules.
o Conditional Probability.
o Multiplicative Rules.
o Bayes Rules.

7.5

Random Variables and Probability Distribution.

o Concept of a random variable.
o Discrete probability distributions.
o Continuous probability distributions.
o Joint probability distributions.
o Independent random variables
Mathematical Expectation.
o Mean of a random variable.
o Variance and Covariance.
o Means and Variances of linear combinations of random
variables.
o Chebychevs theorem.
Some Discrete Probability Distribution
o Discrete uniform distributions.
o Binomial and Multinomial distributions.
o Poisson distributions and its properties.
Some Continuous Probability Distribution
o Normal distribution and its applications.
o Normal approximation to the binomial distributions.
o Central Limit Theorem
Random Sampling, Data Description, Sampling Distribution
o Random sampling.
o Variability of Samples.
o Data Displays and Graphical Methods.
o Sampling Distributions.
o Sampling Distributions of Means.
o Sampling Distributions. Of the difference between two
means.
o Sampling Distributions of Variances.
o T-distributions.
o F-distributions.
Estimation Problems
o Statistical inference

7.5

4.5

4.5

4.5

o
o
o
o
o
o
o
9

Estimating the mean of single samples.

Standard error of a point of estimate
Prediction interval
Tolerance limits
Estimating the difference between two sample means
Estimating the variance of a single sample.
Estimating the ratio of two variances of two samples

4.5

Testing Hypothesis
o Testing the statistical hypothesis
o The use of P-value for decision making
o Hypothesis testing for the mean of a Single sample.
(Variance is known)
o Hypothesis testing for the mean of a Single sample.
(Variance is unknown)
o Tests of two means of two samples.

4.5

Course Policy: There will be no retests (make-ups) under any circumstances. If a test is
missed for legitimate reason, its value will be added to the value of the final examination,
which will be more difficult.
Attendance: Attendance is mandatory. Students should be in class by the starting time of the
session. Also, students who leave the class before the end of the session will be marked
absent. If you miss one third of the class sessions you will be given a grade of AW. If the
absence limit is reached after the withdrawal deadline, you will get an "F" on the course.
Cellular phones are not allowed in class. Talking or any form of disruption in the classroom
will not be tolerated.
Rules and Regulations:
1. Talking or asking questions are not allowed during tests.
2. Sharing calculators or any other material is not allowed during all testing situations.
3. It is the students responsibility to know exactly where and when their exams will be
held. Excuses such as I thought my exam was at 11:00 instead of 2:00, or I thought
the test will be held in class, not in the auditorium are absolutely not acceptable. Those
excuses will automatically result in a mark of 0% on the missed test.
4. Students have the right to know exactly how a given grade was assigned to them.
Academic Dishonesty: Any attempts at cheating or sharing information during a test will
result in a zero grade for the test.
Assignments: Homework will be given but not collected or graded. Doing the assigned
problems is the minimum needed work to pass this course, as the final exam and tests will be
based largely on the homework.
Exams and Grading Policy: The course grade will be based on:
Exam
Weight
Date
Exam1
30%
Nov 11 at 10:00 a.m.

Notes

Exam2
Final

30%
40%

Dec 11 at 10:00 a.m.

According to the university final exams schedule