Chapter 10: Samples, Continued (Days 71-72)

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'm continuing to work on the resources I see on AP Classroom. This time, I find a worksheet packet on College Board Unit 4.3 (on non-motion applications of the derivative). The goal is always to have the students submit one page from this packet as Assignment #59, depending on how far we get. Today is also November 30th -- the anniversary of the day I hit my P.E. teacher and was suspended from school. I continue my tradition today of telling this story to whichever class I sub during third period (the anniversary period), which this year is my Calculus class.

Unfortunately, this class doesn't go as smoothly as it should. First, before the packets, I want to do a few questions from last night quickly. But one problem involves a certain parameter a and asks students to find where the particle is farthest to the right. It's easy to find the derivative and set it equal to zero, but it's not obvious that this value is a maximum rather than a minimum. Taking the second derivative produces a solution that is negative when a < 2 and positive when a > 2 -- thus implying that when a is large, this critical point is a minimum and so there is no rightmost point.

Then I start the fifth page, and see that it directs the students to use nDeriv, the numerical differentiation function on the TI, nDeriv. (Part of the long hold-up with the course validation is that my syllabus lacked an activity on nDeriv, so I definitely want to teach this lesson.) I reach this page with about 15 minutes left in class -- a bit too early to start the Exit Pass, but not quite enough time to teach nDeriv fully. But I start the lesson anyway -- and then, of course, the students don't understand it. They might also have some trouble with Assignment #60 (two questions from the Question Bank). This is my first block period Calculus since my visit to the flagship school. Today I do ask the students more questions to check for understand, and notice that the veteran teacher doesn't always finish his activities each day either. But it just looks so, I don't know, unpolished (or even unprofessional) when I start something and not finish, as opposed to making a smooth stop.

Meanwhile, I do start after-school tutoring today, but there's a slight hiccup here as well. I work with the one absent Calculus girl to help prepare her for today's make-up test -- but then I end up neglecting two other students (a guy from Calculus and a girl from Ethnostats). I must avoid this in the future -- I don't want them to start thinking, why bother showing up for tutoring when the teacher will ignore us?

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