Title: Week 18 Overview — Start Here
Course: Introduction to Statistics (18-Week Generic Edition)

Welcome to Week 18: Final Exam Week

This is your home base for the last week of the course. Read it first, then work the checklist below from top to bottom — the order matters this week more than usual.

Here's the honest shape of the week: there is nothing new to learn. Every question on the final comes from a week you've already completed — fresh scenarios, clean numbers, same skills. Your job is to consolidate, rehearse, and then show up. And keep the stakes in perspective: the final is a low-stakes checkpoint worth 5%. The grade has lived in your weekly work all term, and that part is already written. This week is the victory lap with a scoreboard.

The week's big question

"Can you look at a brand-new statistical situation and know what to do — without anyone telling you which chapter it came from?"

That's the one skill a cumulative exam measures that no weekly quiz can: choosing the tool. Mean, proportion, counts in categories, or a line — one sample, two samples, or the same individuals twice. Everything else is execution you've already practiced.

By the end of this week, you can…

- [ ] Walk the four-unit map of the course from memory: describe → chance & models → estimate → test & choose.
- [ ] Route any scenario to its procedure using the decision map (the final's favorite move).
- [ ] Execute the machinery cleanly: z- and t-calculations on stated table values, intervals, tests, chi-square, and slope inference — with the classic traps (s vs. SE, "fail to reject ≠ accept," at-least vs. exactly) dodged on sight.
- [ ] Finish the course knowing exactly what you can now do that you couldn't in Week 1.

What to do this week, in order

The table below lists the week's items in working order, with what each is worth and when it's due.

# | Do this | Type | Due
1 | Read the Final Exam Study Guide — all 17 weeks condensed, with worked mini-examples (do them on paper) | Page · ungraded prep | Early in the week
2 | Attend the review session and photograph the four map slides (Deck 18); skim the review outline if you miss class | Prep · ungraded | Session 1
3 | Take the Practice Final — 30 questions in the real exam's shape · unlimited attempts, feedback after each try · shares zero questions with the real final | Practice · ungraded (Practice exercises group) | Before the final (recommended: at least two days ahead)
4 | Run the Exam-Prep Tutorial — your chatbot diagnoses all four units, drills your weak spots, and ends with a 10-question mock round; submit the share link + Completion Summary | Tutorial · graded (Lecture tutorials, 20% group) · 10 pts | On or before the final (mid-week)
5 | Take the Final Exam — 60 questions × 2 points = 120 · cumulative · one attempt · closed to AI | Exam · graded (Final group, 5%) | Mid-week of Week 18

Why the order matters: the study guide reloads everything; the practice exam then tells you the truth about what stuck; the tutorial repairs exactly what the practice exam exposed. Students who reverse the order spend their tutorial time discovering what the practice exam would have told them in thirty minutes.

A word about AI this week: your chatbot is your coach right up to the exam door — the practice final and the prep tutorial are built for it. The final itself, like every quiz this term, is closed to AI. That's the deal all term: the tool drafts and coaches; you are the one who gets measured.

Late policy reminder: 10% off per day late applies to the tutorial submission. The final has a fixed window — if life is happening this week, contact your instructor before the exam window, not after. Early is always easier.

How to succeed this week

- Two hours across three days beats one long night. Guide → practice → tutorial is deliberately sized for that rhythm, with the exam mid-week and breathing room after.
- Practice the retrieval, not the re-reading. Do the study guide's mini-examples with the solutions covered. Reading solutions feels like learning; producing them is learning.
- Drill the decision map out loud. For any scenario: what's the answer's shape — mean, proportion, counts, or a line? One sample, two, or paired? Say the tool before touching a formula.
- Know your top three traps. The all-term champions: s vs. SE, "95% of individuals," and fail-to-reject read as proven. If you dodge just those, you're ahead.
- Don't memorize tables. Any question needing a z, t, or chi-square value prints it. Practice using stated values quickly.
- Then close the laptop and sleep. A rested brain outperforms a crammed one on recognition tasks — and 60 multiple-choice questions are recognition tasks.

Eighteen weeks ago, you couldn't reliably tell a sample from a population. This week you'll choose correctly among nine inference tools without being told which one. That happened one steady week at a time — which is exactly how everything worth having gets built. Finish strong.