INSTRUCTIONS:

Strive to be thorough and unbiased in developing your answers. Include appropriate references as needed.

Place your name on the top right-hand corner of this page.

QUESTIONS:

Question 1:

Read the (attached document - Page 1 to 2) article entitled "Data analysis: Frequently Bayesian" (Cowan, 2007). Complete an essay that

(i) Summarizes the main points of the article;

(ii) Discusses the relevance of the results and findings presented in the article to a student's own graduate research (in general);

(iii) Your overall critique of the article. The essay should consist of three solid paragraphs at the minimum, reflecting your thoughts and view after your thorough reading and comprehension of the article.

Question 2

Read the article entitled (attached document - Page 3) "A question of ethics: A case study" in the August 8 issue of ASCE News.

(i) Summarize the case reported in the article and your overall view; and

(ii) Describe a case in your discipline (food process and engineering or in general), in which an ethical issue similar to the one presented in the article may arise and how you would handle it.

Question 3:

(i) What are missing data? What are outliers? Give examples.

(ii) How do you handle missing data and outliers?

(iii) In general, do you set a significance level prior or post your statistical analyses? When your statistical analyses results are not supportive of your null hypothesis, how would you proceed (general approach)?

Note: in statistics, a null hypothesis H0 is set up "to be nullified or refuted in order to support an alternative hypothesis. When used, the null hypothesis is presumed true until statistical evidence in the form of a hypothesis test indicates otherwise. In classical science, the null hypothesis is used to test differences in treatment and control groups, and the assumption at the outset of the experiment is that no difference exists between the two groups for the variable being compared." (Wikipedia, 2007)

Question 4:

Provide two tips (in detail) to better prepare for a graduate (final) thesis defense/presentation.

Question 5:

Write a code (in any computer language of your choice) to carry out the multiplication of two matrices each of dimension n×n. For a given value of n, output the multiplication result. Present both your code and results.