Stats, Common Core Style

Today is Giving Tuesday, a day devoted to donations to charity. It's the last day of a week in which nearly every day has a special name (except Sunday -- perhaps it should be Airport Sunday, as the busiest travel day of the year is often declared to be on that Sunday.) Meanwhile, my Cyber Monday purchases arrive -- including Cheng's logic book. (Speaking of logic, I like the Google Doodle on Lofti Zadeh/fuzzy logic.) Today in Stats, we proceed with the next six pages in Chapter 10, on samples. In these pages, the students learn more about various types of samples -- Simple Random Samples, stratified random samples, cluster samples, and systematic samples. A table of random numbers is used -- the randInt function on the TI calculator doesn't appear until Chapter 12 -- which, of course, this class won't reach since we're moving on to Trig second semester. But I show it to my class anyway (as it's the basis of my random name generator). Meanwhile, in Calculus, I...

Today is Cyber Monday. I just made my Amazon purchases on the big shopping day today. This includes the next Rebecca Rapoport calendar:  Mathematics: Your Daily Epsilon on Math 2022. I used to write about the Rapoport calendar all the time on the old blog -- since it was considered to be a Geometry blog, I'd regularly discuss Geometry problems from her calendar. While there are a few Calculus or Stats problems on her calendar, they are few and far between. And the lone Calculus problem this month is an integral, while we won't reach integrals until second semester in Chapter 5. (Then again, the Rapoport calendar is the inspiration for my Exit Passes, where the answer is always the date.) Also among my Cyber Monday purchases are two of Eugenia Cheng's books. Last week, I mentioned how two of her books are related to Ethnostats topics --  Art of Logic  and  x  +  y  -- and so I finally broke down and bought those two books for her classroom. Previously, ...

Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2. What If? COVID-86 3.  What If? COVID-91 4. What If? COVID-93 5. What If? COVID-96 (NEW) 6. What If? COVID-08 7. What If? COVID-14 8. Plans for Ethnostats 9. Cheng's  Art of Logic in an Illogical World , Chapter 2 10. Conclusion Introduction Today is Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. It is, of course, a day strongly associated with shopping and sales. For the blog, it's a day to catch up with some topics that I don't have time to discuss when school is in session. On my old blog, I established something I called "COVID What-Ifs." These are stories in which I seek to answer the question, "What if the COVID-19 pandemic had occurred when I was much younger?" I consider myself fortunate not to have had a pandemic during my youth, but my current students, of course, aren't so lucky. I can never truly know what it's like to suffer through a pandemic as a child or teenager. But I can start to empathize with my...

Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2. The Problems With Weighting Grades 3. The Problems With NOT Weighting Grades: Quizzes 4.  The Problems With NOT Weighting Grades: Homework 5. My Plans for December 6. My Trigonometry Class 7. Tutoring 8. Retakes and Extra Credit 9. Cheng's Art of Logic in an Illogical World , Chapter 1 10. Conclusion Introduction Today is Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving. The day has a few alcohol-related nicknames, none of which I care to post on an education blog. This is the first of two special posts I plan on writing during the school break. I wish to catch up on a few topics that I didn't have time to blog about during the school year. In particular, last week's visit to the Calculus teacher at the main high school is still fresh on my mind. I want to discuss how I'll implement some of the ideas I saw into my own classroom, as well as why incorporating other ideas into my class will be more challenging. I'll definitely be comparing my...