Using technology
In many theoretical mathematics courses, little computation is required. However, in both the undergraduate and graduate mathematical statistics courses that I teach, students need to be able do these tasks using software.
In this graduate theoretical statistics course, we will discuss some other computational tasks using software. I will provide scripts and instructions in R for these tasks listed above and for other computational tasks in the course. Students are not expected to know R before the course begins, and are not expected to learn to be adept with R during the course. However, I expect students to be able to run the scripts I provide and adapt them in a minimal way. Students will work in groups on any work requiring them to use R and grading on this work will be on just minimal participation.
It is fine - a good thing, indeed - for students to know how to use other software besides R to do any or all of these tasks. I am emphasizing the use of R because I would like for students in the class to be able to work with each other and using the same package is helpful for that. R is freely available so that everyone can have easy access to it, and it takes only minimal setup to run the scripts I will provide.
R is a free package which is available on several different platforms. Information about downloading and setting it up will be provided.