Chapter 4: Exploring Quantitative Data, Continued (Days 21-22)

Today in Stats, we continue with the next six pages in Chapter 4, "Exploring Quantitative Data." These pages cover one more type of distribution -- the dotplot -- as well as the mode, median, and range of a particular distribution. This means that it's time for another Sarah Carter activity. That's because Carter blogs and tweets extensively about dotplots:

https://mathequalslove.net/how-many-states-have-you-visited-map/

And so I decide to do this "How many states have you visited?" activity today. Since my classes are so small, I'm including all of my Stats classes -- both general and Ethnostats -- in the dotplot. I begin by telling them that I've visited fifteen states -- California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Maryland, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. Meanwhile, the most states visited by any of my students so far is five. Two of my students have never been to any state outside California -- and indeed, I inform them that I myself had never breathed outside of California until a family road trip the summer between my junior and senior years.

Oh, and speaking of Ethnostats, I do finally receive some more information about the class today. Our history teacher (officially the lead Ethnic Studies teacher) contacted someone who is in charge of Ethnic Studies in the district, and she sent me an electronic folder containing some assignments from the previous Ethnostats class from two years ago. Some of these include activities related to the current Chapter 4. One of them is a dotplot activity similar to Carter's, except instead of how many states one has visited, the data here are the students' privilege numbers. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do tomorrow in Ethnostats. I've already started the dotplot on number of states visited and told today's Stats students that I'm including tomorrow's Ethnostats students, so I really do want to finish it. Then again, this dotplot is arguably already one about privilege -- after all, more affluent students are more likely to have visited many states, while immigrants are more likely to arrive in California from their native lands and not travel to any other states.

Meanwhile, in Calculus we are moving on to Section 2.3, on finding limits using the limit laws. Two students -- the absent girl and the low-scoring guy -- make up their tests today. I haven't graded them yet to see how well they've done. For Calculus, there's a possibility that I'll be participating in some sort of AP seminar next week.

In Advisory class, we are still trying to establish a weekly pattern -- College on Tuesdays, Career on Wednesdays, and Social/Emotional Learning on Thursdays. Today we are establishing a Talking Circle, and I randomly choose today's topic, "I can't wait for..." I've seen one math teacher mention Talking Circles on Twitter, though not lately -- Chris Sieling. Here's a link to his blog:

http://cjsieling.blogspot.com/

Tomorrow is our "homecoming" -- sort of. Even though we don't have a football team, there will be a football game -- seniors vs. juniors. Then at night will be the homecoming dance.

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