Stats, Common Core Style

Yesterday and today, the students take their final exams. Yes, I know that it's only Days 172 and 173, but recall that most of my students are seniors who must take them early. And it's easier just to have the two juniors in my fourth period Ethnostats class take the exam as well. The main reason for early senior exams is to give the students and their parents  peace of mind heading into graduation. But it leaves us with seven extra days with nothing for the students to do, after senior grades are turned in at noon on Tuesday. I'll have to decide what to do on those days. One more error is discovered on the Ethnostats final. A question asks the students to use a random number table to simulate five lottery numbers, but all of the multiple choice options have six numbers -- with the sixth number being wrong. But this is nowhere near as problematic as yesterday's Trig function. Yes, I wrote the entire test over spring break, including all 30 questions. The problem was tha...

As most of you already know, there was a mass shooting yesterday at a Texas elementary school. I have only one thing to say about this and the other violent incidents that recently occurred around the nation -- it's just so sad that many of these shooters are right around the age of my own students. Due to the Texas incident, a lockdown drill occurs at 10:00 today. And it's possible that another such drill might be scheduled for next week. All students and teachers had to enter campus through the same gate that we previously used for safety against COVID, now being used for safety against violence. As it turns out, today's one of the busiest days I've ever had as a teacher. Perhaps I should have made today "A Day in the Life" instead of last week: Advisory is graduation practice. We teachers must participate in the practice since, after all, we'll be there for the actual graduation. In second period Ethnostats, the review for the final exam continues. And ...

Today in Ethnostats, it's time to start preparing for the final exam. As I mentioned before, the second semester final will cover Chapters 11-18. Originally I'm hoping to review two chapters today, both 11 and 12. But in the end, we review only Chapter 11 today. Of the thirty questions on the exam (that I wrote over spring break, if you recall), a whopping eight are from Chapter 11, so spending this much time on the chapter is worth it. This chapter is titled "Observational Studies and Experiments." For most of the questions on the final, the kids are given a study or survey, and they must identify whether it's an experiment for not. And for experiments, they must state how many treatments there are. But there are also a few other types of related questions on my exam as well. To conduct today's review, I begin by passing out a worksheet of questions copied from the text, which the students must complete. But then I also hand out markers and conduct the review...

Today is the last day that I'm devoting to the group video project in Ethnostats. The official due date isn't until Monday, but today's the last day that I'll give the students any time in class. I also end up covering classes both yesterday and today for the science teacher -- yesterday it was fifth period Chemistry, and this year it's sixth period Physics. You read that right -- I subbed for fifth period science, even though I already had a fifth period Trig class. Well, that's how short-staffed we are! But fortunately, the Chemistry and Trig classes had only three students each (which is most likely why they chose me to cover both classes). The Trig class yesterday was on proving trig identities -- Section 5.1 of the text. Recall that I already wrote the final exam, and that 5.1 is the last section that appears on it, so I officially reached my goal. The Chemistry students had their own assignment where they had to read and answer questions. I'm not sure ...

This marks my 100th post on my new blog. So I'm adding the label "milestone" to this post -- and I think I'll count it as "A Day in the Life" as well. With the cancellation of the minimum days, there's no natural choice regarding which day I should count as my monthly post, so I'll just choose today. (And besides, today's the 18th -- recall that on the old blog in 2016-17, the 18th was my original monthly posting day.) 8:00  -- My Advisory class arrives. I admit that of all my classes, Advisory is the one I write about the least on the blog. After all, I'm a math teacher, so of course I think the most about what's going on with my math students. But this is a great opportunity to blog about my morning senior Advisory class as well. First of all, I've been trying to have two graded assignments in this class per week. One of them is some sort of financial literacy lesson, and the other is a character SEL lesson. Both lessons are done in...

Today in Ethnostats, we continue working on the group project. And so now it's time for me to answer the question, should this remain as a video project? Well, today's also the start of the Calculus project, and I've received many ideas from the other Calc teacher at the main high school -- not all of which involve videos. And so I decide that it's easiest just to use the same guidelines with the projects at both classes, and among those guidelines is that the groups should contain two or three members. My second period Ethnostats class has just four students, so naturally I divide them into two pairs. One pair tells me that they will now do a Powerpoint instead of a video. But the second duo still wants to do a video -- and it appears that they'll ask the first pair to appear in that video as well. I look forward to seeing what both groups produce this week. My fourth period class is larger, and so things are a bit trickier. One guy doesn't want to work in a gr...

Today may be Friday the thirteenth, but my bad luck day was yesterday, Thursday the twelfth. That was the day when I was notified that my pink slip had become official. In other words, it was possible that a spot might open up if a couple of math teachers decided to retire, but that never happened. And so I'm now officially unemployed. And as I mentioned in previous posts, there's absolutely nothing I could have done this year to have changed the outcome -- the decision was completely determined by numbers, seniority, and tenure. If there's anything I could have changed, it was in past years -- find a way to have gotten a job earlier so that I'd have enough seniority to avoid the cuts. I'll be making more comments about this in future posts -- specifically what this means for my career and what it means for the blog. But I'll post more on that later. Right now, I want to focus on the last days of my current job. This marks the start of the last 18 days or 10% of...

Today I am interviewing for a teaching position for next year. I believe that a true sub really does take over my classes this time, with Assignment #39 on Edpuzzle. Thus I don't have much to say in this post.

Today in Ethnostats, we proceed with the next three pages in Chapter 18. These pages discuss alternative decision rules, including alpha levels, critical values, and P-values. I'm a bit surprised here that although P-values, the statistical fallacy known as P- hacking  isn't. (P-hacking was mentioned in a Stats class I subbed for just before the pandemic.) During the Warm-Up, I featured the next of the three mathematicians for Asian Heritage Month -- Diana Ma, a data scientist for the LA Lakers. She is a statistician, so her work is very relevant to my class. I note that several statisticians were previously mentioned during the Warm-Ups back during Hispanic Heritage Month as well. With today's lesson, this marks the last time that I will lecture in this Ethnostats class. We move away from the chapters in the text and towards the end-of-year project (which will be a video). Again, actually it's the third unit  project that is meant to be given after the third (out of fo...

Today in Ethnostats, we move on to the next six pages in Chapter 18, on testing hypotheses. This section includes Type I and II errors as well as one- and two-tailed alternatives. I also found a link to a website mentioning three mathematicians for Asian-American Heritage Month: https://www.ngpf.org/blog/math/math-monday-celebrating-aapi-mathematicians/ In Trig we work on Section 4.4, finding equations from graphs. Meanwhile, I'm still worried about my Calculus students and their prospects of passing the AP. Yesterday, I tried to go over some free response questions, but many of my students had trouble with them. And I'm wondering how much of their struggles here are my fault  as a teacher. Recall my decision -- on the advice of the Calculus teacher at the main high school -- to abandon my original plan of rushing through the seven chapters and leave six weeks for reviewing AP questions. I slowed down to give the students more opportunity to learn the material. So instead of ha...

Today in Ethnostats, we move on to Chapter 18, on testing hypotheses about proportions. It's the last chapter that we'll cover before the final. Students learn about the difference between the "null hypothesis" and an "alternative hypothesis." Of course, I'm still dealing with damage control after the unexpected schedule change on Monday followed by the sub day yesterday. My (admittedly artificial) constraint that the points in all my classes must be equal is getting tricky. First of all, I already knew that I wouldn't get to Assignment #67 in Calculus before the AP. Going into this week, I was at least hoping to reach sixty assignments -- #57 on Monday, #58 and #59 yesterday, and then a quick VNPS on Thursday for #60 (so that it can completed in class that day, rather than be due on the day of the AP). But that was before we lost Monday to the schedule change. So yesterday, I gave Assignments #57 and #58. These are my usual sub day go-to Edpuzzles. ...

There was yet another unexpected schedule change today. It's originally supposed to be the monthly minimum day for May. But of course, I know better than that by now -- those extra days off in January have forced the cancellation of most remaining minimum days. What was unexpected though, is that instead of an all-classes Monday, it was decided that today would be an even block day (without any corresponding odd block day). Why isn't today an all-classes Monday? I'm not sure. You've probably seen in previous "A Day in the Life" posts that school is out at 2:40 on regular Mondays and 3:05 on block days. So perhaps in the name of making up minutes from January, those extra 25 minutes make a difference. As to why today is an even day rather than an odd day, it could be as simple as Tuesday being a regular odd day, and it's desirable to avoid having two consecutive odd block days. So what did my classes do on this sudden even block day? Well, in Advisory, I...