Chapter 7: A Tale of Two Variables, Continued (Days 50-51)

Today is the third Thursday in October. Here in California, that means it's time for the Great California Shakeout -- the world's largest earthquake drill. By tradition, the time of the drill matches the date -- and so this year's drill is at 10:21 on 10/21.

Back when I was a substitute teacher, I would intentionally avoid subbing on Shakeout Day, since I don't want to be the one to watch the students or figure out where on the field to take them. And if I can't skip it completely, I try to cover a teacher I know has a conference period around drill time. Then I drive off campus around 10:00 and don't return until around 11:00 so as not to be involved.

This year's drill occurs during first period -- and recall that my first period was the class with just one student, until it collapsed and he was switched to my other class. But even though I do have a prep period during the drill, I already knew coming in (from the teachers meeting on Monday) that I'd be assigned some task, and so I can't just escape. Originally, I was to be placed on "search and rescue." Instead, I ended up supervising the class of my partner math teacher, since she had her own task to fulfill.

Today is also the sports equinox -- a day when all four major sports are being contested. One of those games are being played here in Southern California -- in baseball, Game 5 of the NLCS between the Dodgers and Braves. Meanwhile in basketball, the Clippers visit San Francisco for the Warriors' home opener, in hockey, the Ducks visit Winnipeg, Canada to play the Jets, and Thursday Night Football has the Denver Broncos playing the Cleveland Browns. There are a few Dodger fans in my classes, and so they'll be happy to know that the home team prevailed 11-2 to extend the series to a Game 6.

OK, so that's enough about earthquakes and baseball -- what about math? Today in Stats, we cover the next six pages of Chapter 7, on bivariate data and scatterplots. On these pages, the students learn that correlation is not always causation -- and that association is not always correlation. Technically, it's only correlation if the variables are quantitative (numbers, counts, and measurements), not categorical.

In Calculus, we proceed with Section 3.5 of the text, on implicit differentiation. As you might expect, this lesson is tricky, with all those y' (or dy/dx) factors that come in.

Meanwhile, in Ethnostats, I'm still trying to decide when to do the next project. One thing that may influence my decision is Sarah Carter, who just tweeted about a project she gave her Stats class. It has something to do with the NFL -- maybe in honor of the sports equinox today? So far, I've been doing Carter activities in the Stats scrapbook -- after all, the scrapbook is itself a Carter brainchild. Then again, the project she tweeted today appears to mention a Google spreadsheet.

This means that the other project I mentioned earlier this week -- the "Whodunnit" that the Ethnostats teacher did two years ago -- fits nicely into tomorrow's schedule. After all, I can afford to do this project now, knowing that I have Carter's football project for later on. Tomorrow is my tweeting day, and so I'll describe what this activity looks like on Twitter.

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