Jack L. Vevea (sparkjlv@gmail.com)
(Please note that this is a special email address for this class; I will not monitor it after the conclusion of the class. My regular email is jvevea@ucmerced.edu.)
Social Science and Management Building 306a
Wednesdays 2:00-4:00 (or by appointment) except September 4 and September 11. Instead, those weeks' office hours will be held Tuesday, 3:40-5:00.
(209) 658-1706 (but email is usually a much quicker way to reach me)
There is no textbook for this course. Readings will be available as links from this syllabus.
We will meet Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:30 to 3:20 AM in GLCR 120.
In this seminar, we examine numerical oddities that affect and sometimes distort humans' interactions with the world. Examples include strange behavior rooted in our misunderstanding of probability, distortions in our memory that actually improve the accuracy of memories, misleading graphical protrayal of data, and questions about causation. The semester concludes with a debate about the mathematics and ethics of racial profiling.
In the class, you will:
Spark seminars have no prerequisites. Enrollment is limited to first year students.
Grading will be based on a combination of written assignments, class presentations, class participation, and participation in the culminating debate. Weekly writing assignments will count for 40% of your final grade; your in-class presentations will count for 30% of your grade; attendance and participation will count for 15%; and participation in the final debate will count for 15%. Students who visit the instructor's office hours at least twice will receive a 10% bump on their weakest evaluation component.Important exception: Any student who misses more than 50% of the classes when role is taken will receive a failing grade in the class, regardless of his or her performance on other components.
These components make up the final grade in the following manner. First, each component gets a grade point value: A+ = 4.3, A = 4.0, A- = 3.7, B+ = 3.3, B = 3.0, B- = 2.7, and so on. The weighted average of the grade points from the four components determines your final grade. The following table shows the mapping of grade point averages to letter grades:
Grade Point Range Letter Grade GPA > 4.25 A+ 3.75 < GPA < 4.25 A 3.50 < GPA < 3.75 A- 3.25 < GPA < 3.50 B+ 2.75 < GPA < 3.25 B 2.50 < GPA < 2.75 B- 2.25 < GPA < 2.50 C+ 1.75 < GPA < 2.25 C 1.50 < GPA < 1.75 C- 0.75 < GPA < 1.50 D GPA < 0.75 F
Students should be familiar with University policies on academic integrity. You will find relevant information here.
In the overall context of that policy, the following information is specific to this class: You may work with study partners as you read and react to readings, but the written work you submit should be entirely your own.
UC Merced has a variety of services available to accommodate students with disabilities. Information is available here. If you require accommodations for any component of the class, please contact the instuctor as soon as possible.
You should submit writing assignments through CatCourses. After you navigate to the CatCourses page for this course, click on the "Assignments" button in the list on the left. Then, click on the link to the specific assignment you are submitting. Make sure to combine everything into one document because CatCourses will allow only one file. That file must have a .doc, .docx, or .pdf file extension (no .odt, .zip, .pages file extensions). All deadlines are at 11:59 PM on the due date, and the CatCourses system will not accept submissions after that time.
Initial class meeting: introduction, using the class web page. How to read a scientific article. Introduction to library resources.
Readings for this week:
Assignment (to be uploaded to CatCourses by 11:59 PM on 9/7/2019): Write a paragraph on each of the following topics:
The following article on stereotype threat will be used in discussion during Tuesday's class. You do not need to read this paper in advance.
Simpson's paradox. (Short class on September 5.)
Please read and be prepared to discuss this paper for Tuesday's class.
Assignment (to be uploaded to CatCourses by 11:59 PM on 9/14/2019):
Here is a guess the correlation application that we will use in class on Thursday.Use search techniques demonstrated in class to identify another paper (i.e., not the one that was assigned reading for Tuesday) that explains and demonstrates Simpson's paradox. Then write a paragraph on each of the following topics:
Honest and dishonest graphics.
Here is a link to some examples of bad graphics presented in class on Tuesday.Here is a link to the graph of Napoleon's advance and retreat in the war of 1812, discussed in class on Thursday.
Here is the URL for the spurious correlations page that appeared in Ari's presentation.
Assignment (to be uploaded to CatCourses by 11:59 PM on 9/21/2019):(Just to be clear, the graph you use for this assignment should not be one that was presented in class or in the chapter.)Revisit the "bad graphics" link above. In addition, read this chapter contributed by a class member from last year. Then:
Scientific method. The role of statistics in creating knowledge.
The following hyperlinks on statistical basics and statistical significance will be used in class this week. Please note that the first link contains some inaccuracies.
Assignment (to be uploaded to CatCourses by 11:59 PM on 9/28/2019):It is time to use your search skills to acquire information about a topic (rather than, say, read an assigned paper). With that in mind, identify at least one source that tells you who Karl Popper was and what his major contributions to scientific method were. Then write a reading response that addresses the following points:
Bayes' theorem and Bayesian statistics.
This link is the editors' introduction to a special issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science dealing with the replication crisis. Read the article; then select another full-length article from the same issue of the journal and read it. (By full-length, I mean to exclude brief responses to other articles. By all means, if you read an article that has a response, read the response too; it will be elightening.)Write a reading response (due 10/5) that addresses the following:
Here is a visual guide that will help you navigate to the special journal issue used in this week's assignment.
Here is the random dot stereogram we discussed in class last week. We'll be working with this example again on 9/26.
Here is the virtual whiteboard work from 9/24 showing the logic of Bayesian statistics.
Here is a youtube video on Bayesian resoning that we will view in class on 9/26.
The replication crisis.
The base rate problem.
On Tuesday, we viewed a video of a talk that Kahneman delivered at Google in 2015. (If you need to refresh your memory, you can find the talk by searching youtube.com for "kahneman google" or "kahneman thinking fast and slow". It's the one for which the length is 1:02:27.) Write a viewing response that addresses the following points:
Bayesian shrinkage as an aid to memory.
On Tuesday, Adam presented information about this paper on Bayesian use of categorical information as a memory aid. In addition, this paper, describes experiments similar to the dot-in-circle task we did as a class exercise, and here is a link to the paper that reports on a similar investigation using a rhesus monkey.Write a read the second and third papers, and write a reading response that addresses the following points:
This assignment is due October 26, 2019.
Bayesian shrinkage as an aid to memory (continued).
In-groups and out-groups.
Here is a link to a seminal paper by Tajfel about humans' tendency to discriminate against outgroups.
Write a reading response (due November 9) that addresses the following points:
Please note: we will also discuss this paper later in the week. You should read it, but no reading response is required.
Topics to be determined by class.
Tuesday: interesting numbers and patterns.
Thursday: Mandella effect.
Racial profiling.
Here are links to two articles written by political conservatives about the use of racial profiling as a tool to combat terrorism. This one supports the practice and this one opposes it. Write a reading response (due Saturday, November 23) consisting of a one-page dialog in which the two authors argue their positions with one another.
Racial profiling.
The topic of the debate is: "Resolved: Racial profiling, broadly defined, is a useful tool in such domains as law enforcement, immigration policy, and daily life."
The debate will follow a modified Lincoln-Douglas format:Note that this format allows one more presentation period for the Pro team than for the Con team; however, the total time allocated to each team is the same (28 minutes).
(Class cancelled.)
Debate preparation, pro team.
Debate preparation, con team.
Debate preparation, pro team.
Debate preparation, con team.
Debate.