Chapter 15 Quiz (Day 153)

Today in Ethnostats, we take the Chapter 15 Quiz on Illuminate. This quiz contains two big questions, but each of them has multiple parts, so in reality there are 13 little questions to answer. These questions direct students to find certain probabilities (including conditional probabilities) and explain why certain events are disjoint or independent. One question is on whether taking Stats and Computer courses in college are disjoint or independent, particularly among Biology majors for which one of those courses is required. 

The other one is very relevant to Ethnostats class -- where admission to a certain high school magnet program in Texas is dependent or independent of race. Based on the data given in the problem, students of Asian descent are less likely to be accepted into the program. (Is this due to affirmative action? Who knows -- the quiz only asks students to calculate the probabilities, not speculate on the reasons behind the given data.)

Speaking of college, today's the day by which most seniors should have committed to a college. We celebrate College Signing Day with a games day during morning Advisory. Students get to wear a T-shirt or sweatshirt for their future college home -- and we teachers get to wear it too. So I arrive at school wearing my UCLA T-shirt. As it turns out, two girls at my school are also future Bruins (though neither of them are in my classes).

Meanwhile, yesterday in my Calculus class, I gave the Chapter 7 quiz on differential equations. But of the six students in my class, only two of them actually took the quiz that day. Of the other four students, one girl is the lone junior in the class -- and I didn't have the heart to make her take the quiz after having spent most of that morning and the previous day working on the SBAC math test. Another guy attended my class for the Warm-Up, but then left to meet his counselor to help him make his college decision (a very tough one as he's been accepted to several schools, including some out-of-state). The other two students were both absent. At any rate, I'll be spending much of Monday with make-up tests.

In Trig, we started Section 7.3, on basic trig functions and phase shift. Phase shift is often a confusing topic for students -- why is sin(x + pi/2) the same as graph of sin x translated pi/2 units to the left? I like to pass out slips of paper and have each student write his or her name on it. Then the students pass the slips one person to the left. Each one now has the name of the person to his or her right -- that is, "name of person on right" becomes f (person on right), which in turn becomes f (x + 1).

Today is Fiveday on the Eleven Calendar:

Resolution #5: We stay focused and on task.

And of course, my Ethnostats students must stay focused and on task today as we review for today's quiz through the VNPS. This is particularly important for second period -- again, recall that I mixed up their assignment on the day I proctored the SBAC, so they missed most of their Chapter 15 Study Guide. I'll grade those quizzes over the weekend to find out how well this class is able to stay focused today.

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