36-835 PhD Seminar, Spring 2004
Research Seminar in Statistics

Tentative Schedule:
Tue/Thu 1:30 - 2:50, Room TBA

[We will regularly meet one day a week with makeup/overflow days as
needed on the "other" scheduled class day.  My guess is we will meet
approximately 20 times during the semester.]

Course Web Pages: 
  (1) http://www.stat.cmu.edu/~brian/seminar [announcements and general information]
  (2) http://www.cmu.edu/blackboard/ [pre-class questions and other discussions]

Here is a tentative list of speakers / schedule.

Brian W. Junker
Department of Statistics
132E Baker Hall
(412) 268-2718 or 8874
brian@stat.cmu.edu

[feel free to contact me with inquiries, suggestions, etc.]

Activities
----------

For most class periods we will schedule an outside speaker, usually a
member of the Statistics Department, to give a research presentation
from a recent conference or visit to another department.

As preparation for this, we will ask the speaker to provide a related
paper to read, and you will post, to the course Discussion Board on
Blackboard, two questions about the paper or a relevant topic, by
5:00pm the day before class.  You are expected to bring to class all
questions posted for that day's discussion.  These questions are the
kind of questions you would ask when a visitor presents a public
seminar to the department, or when reviewing a paper for a journal.
You should try to ask the best questions possible.

During other class periods I will organize discussions about successful
academic life in Statistics, incuding: time management; writing, publishing 
and reviewing papers; choosing research topics and collaborations; grant 
and proposal writing; teaching in the real world; etc.  I will also ask you 
to post to Blackboard two questions about each of these topics, by 5:00pm
the day before each discussion.

During the first couple of class meetings we will organize the rest of
the semester together.

Evaluation
----------

Your main activities in this seminar will be to read papers, post
questions on time before each class presentation/discussion, and
participate in each class session.

Occasionally I may ask you to do some other activity, like summarize a
paper, digest and discuss a handout, try a small data analysis, verify
or critique a calculation or line of reasoning, report on something
you've been doing, etc.

All class participants (registered or not) are expected to participate
in all activities.

Grading is pass/fail, and will be based on (1) the quality of the
questions you post before each discussion; (2) the quality of in-class
discussion (during research *and* non-research discussions); and (3)
participation in other activities that I ask you to do.

Objectives
----------

* Learn to read papers, think critically about them, and ask and
  discuss intelligent questions about them.  

* Learn some aspects of being a successful academic researcher.

Prerequisites
-------------

The course is open to any graduate student in Statistics who is taking
or has taken PhD level statistics courses.  Others may enroll with my
permission.