Notes

The weekly design-and-evidence spine

The notes are the backbone of the course. There is one note per week, and reading the current week’s note before class — and again after — is the single most reliable way to keep up. Every note follows the same shape, so once you learn to read one, you can read them all.

How to read a week

Each weekly note is built from the same parts, in the same order. Knowing the anatomy lets you skim for what you need and study with intent:

The week question. A single design question that the week exists to answer. Hold it in mind as you read; everything else is in service of it.
Concept development. The core ideas, built up in a few short sections from intuition toward a precise statement about what a design can claim. This is the part to read slowly — and where the design, the mechanism (sampling? assignment?), and the threats are made explicit.
Worked examples. Each idea is worked on the recurring campus world — the Focus experiment, the tutoring-center observational study, or the study-habits survey — with the design set up, the computation shown, and the result interpreted in sentences — plus one transfer example in a fresh context, so you see the idea move.
A common mistake. The design error students most often make on this topic — confusing sampling with assignment, reading association as causation, adjusting for the wrong variable — named plainly so you can watch for it in your own work.
Ungraded self-checks. A few low-stakes practice prompts to test yourself. These are self-check only — no points, no submission.
Reading pointer. Where to read more: the relevant Introduction to Modern Statistics topic (and, for the randomization and sampling weeks, ModernDive; for the causal-diagram weeks, the optional Causal Inference: What If), with the reminder that these notes are the course’s own synthesis.
Evidence and verification status. An honest note that the numbers in the example studies are drafted and synthetic, pending review — this is a draft course site.
Looking ahead. A sentence or two connecting this week to the next, so the design arc stays visible.

Keep the design glossary and the study-design reference open alongside the notes.

The four parts

The fifteen weeks fall into four parts. Each part has a job, and the weeks within it build on one another.

Part I — Questions, measurement & validity. What a statistical question is, how we measure, the signature distinction between sampling and assignment, and the threats a claim must survive.

Part II — Designed experiments. Randomized comparisons and the refinements that sharpen and structure them.

Part III — Observational & causal evidence. Studies without random assignment, where confounding lurks and causal diagrams keep the reasoning honest.

Part IV — Surveys, sampling & synthesis. Survey sampling, missing data, study critique, and a closing synthesis.

Public vs. graded

These notes and the practice in them are public and ungraded — study material only. No graded prompts, answer keys, rubrics, point values, or due dates appear on this site. Graded design checkpoints, quizzes, design memos and homework, applied design labs, the midterm, the final design project, and the final exam live in Blackboard (the LMS), which is authoritative for due dates, submissions, and grades. If this page and Blackboard ever disagree, follow Blackboard.