Chapter 16: Probability Models, Continued (Day 148)

Today in Ethnostats, we proceed with the next six pages in Chapter 16, on models of probability. These pages are all about Bernoulli trials and finding expected value and standard deviation of binomial models.

I was considering doing a short activity on the next page of the Stats Scrapbook, but I decided not to. The last interactive notebook page we completed was 30, and I think I'll make 31 the last page. This will be a concluding activity leading up to the final project in mid-May. This might be a video project -- and if it is a video, then I want most of the points to be from the video, not notebook pages. So I probably won't do many more notebook pages before mid-May.

So instead, I have the students take notes on the chapter, and then give them time to do the homework assignment in class. Notice that this weekend will be our promotional dance -- the first prom held since before the pandemic. Aware that these juniors and seniors have never had a prom, I wish not to overwhelm the students with homework leading up to their one and only big dance. Thus I decide to give them time to finish their HW in class, as opposed to doing an in-class activity and pushing HW back to prom weekend.

The activity that I was considering would have been tied to today -- Earth Day. Instead, I mention the holiday only through the Exit Pass, as I show them today's Google Doodle. The photos in that doodle show the shrinking polar icecaps and tropical reefs. The measurements of the icecaps and reefs count as Statistics that can be used to demonstrate the recent environmental changes and thus conclude that global warming and pollution are problems.

(I know -- I can't help but think about the failed Green Team project from the old charter school five years ago and how it was supposed to culminate on Earth Day. Today's activity would have been nothing like the Green Team science project. Also, recall that these Ethnostats classes made environmental posters back on the anniversary of Greta Thunberg's speech in September.)

Meanwhile, in Calculus we move on to Section 7.2 of the text. This section is all about "direction fields" -- also known on the AP Exam as "slope fields." I give them two assignments -- one on DeltaMath, the other from the text. (Yes, I know it's prom weekend -- but it's also within three weeks of the AP exam, so we can't afford to skip assignments.) In Trig, we finish Section 3.1 on the graphs of the basic trig functions, including vertical stretching and shrinking. I assign HW from this lesson, but as usual for this class, it won't be due for a while (well after prom weekend).

Today is Nineday on the Eleven Calendar:

Resolution #9: We value academic instructional time.

Well, we use instructional time for HW on this last day before prom weekend. Meanwhile, I often use Ninedays to stress the importance of arriving on time instead of being tardy. But state testing has wreaked havoc with ringing the bells, and so it's been difficult to enforce the no-tardy rule lately.

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