Title: Welcome to Week 17 — the last new tool, and the whole toolkit
Course: Introduction to Statistics (18-Week Generic Edition)

Hi everyone,

Last week you put whole categorical tables on trial with chi-square. This week — the final week of new material — you get the tool everyone's been waiting for: regression. Your energy bill arrives, and you mutter "it was a cold month" — that's a regression running in your head. This week the hunch gets a formula (a line with a slope you can read out loud), a report card (r²), and a trial (the t-test for the slope — the same t-machinery you've used since Week 11).

This week — Linear Regression with Inference + Course Synthesis — we tackle the big question: When can a line drawn through yesterday's data be trusted to predict tomorrow — and how do we tell a real slope from a lucky tilt? And then we zoom out and assemble every tool from the course into one decision map: mean, proportion, counts, or a line?

Three things not to miss: 1. Chapter 17 is your primary reading — start there. The extrapolation trap alone (a line that confidently predicts negative energy use) is worth the read. 2. Data Lab 17 comes full circle: you'll fit a real regression — flipper length predicting body mass — on the same Antarctic penguins you met in Week 1. Three spreadsheet cells, one capstone. Due at the end of Week 17. 3. Discussion 17 — "The Tool You'll Keep" — is the course's last discussion: which tool will you actually use after this course? Initial post two days before the week ends, so classmates can argue with you.

And a calm word about what's next: Week 18 is Final Exam Week. The final is cumulative, 60 multiple-choice, closed to AI, and worth 5% — a low-stakes checkpoint, just like the midterm was. Its study guide, practice exam, and exam-prep tutorial are already in the Week 18 module. Steady weekly work has carried your grade all term; next week is the victory lap.

Open the Start Here / Module Overview page first — it lays out everything in order with due points. Eighteen weeks ago a statistic was a number someone told you. The last chapter of the story is yours.

See you in the course!