Chapter 10: Samples (Day 70)

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, I've only checked out Cheng books from the local library. Indeed, I'd borrowed her latest book -- a children's book -- earlier this year. Its due date at the library was just 24 hours before I was interviewed and hired for my current position, and just eight days before I knew that I'd be teaching Ethnostats.

(Speaking of "eight days," today's also the first full day of Hanukkah. Due to the lunar Hebrew Calendar, all Jewish holidays are relatively early this year. Indeed, this is the second earliest that Hanukkah can begin -- one day later than the famous Thanksgivukkah of 2013.)

My school day today begins with my having to cover an English class during first period (since as usual, there are very few high school subs). The class is quite small -- there are only three students, plus one girl as the TA (who happens to be the lone junior in my Calculus class).

In Stats class, we begin Chapter 10, on samples. The first three pages of this chapter are about the three main ideas of sampling -- they examine a part of a whole, they should be randomized, and it's the sample size that matters. Surprisingly, a small sample size of a few hundred can accurately reflect a large population of millions -- the text compares it to taking a small taste of a large pot of soup. (I tell my student of an episode of Square One TV/Mathnet, about Nielsen ratings and sampling.)

In Calculus we watch Michael Starbird Lecture 8 ("Galileo, Newton, and Baseball"). As I promised, I'm able to launch AP Classroom and assign the student some questions on particle motion. There are also videos to watch there, which might be more helpful than Starbird. Through emails, I also learn that there is a question bank on AP Classroom -- there might be a meeting with all AP teachers on this very soon.

I do inform the students in all classes about tutoring on Tuesdays and Thursdays, since these were the days that I chose.

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