Chapter 18: Surprised? Testing Hypotheses About Proportions, Continued (Day 158)

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 having six weeks between the end of Chapter 7 and the AP exam, I had only six days -- taking into account that half of my class didn't take the Chapter 7 Quiz until this past Tuesday. And I admit it -- it's a bad look when many of my students are seeing the free responses for the first time yesterday, a mere four days before the AP. Of course they'd struggle with them!

This week is the 16th week of the second semester. My new plan was to spend four weeks on each of the chapters from 4 to 6. I knew that I'd only need two weeks for Chapter 7, and so I could spend the last two weeks on AP questions. But then things changed. As much as I've discussed the lost first two days in January and the subsequent loss of minimum days (thus derailing my plans to schedule quizzes/tests just before minimum days), that wasn't the reason I fell behind schedule. The blame goes to my positive COVID test during the fourth week of the semester, and the fact that the Wi-Fi failed, thus preventing the sub from giving the Chapter 4 Test on DeltaMath. This pushed the test back to Week 5 -- when I returned from my unintended COVID break -- and all subsequent chapters fell a week back as well.

There are several things I could have done better. I needed to make sure that the students had two weeks for free response no matter what, rather than put all my eggs in one week's basket (which is susceptible to unexpected schedule changes, student/teacher absences, and so on). I could have, after the Wi-Fi failure, written a short Chapter 4 Test for the sub to print and give on Week 5 Monday (a minimum day) so that Chapter 5 could start that Tuesday. I could have focused more on free response rather than multiple choice during last week's Warm-Ups. I could have tried contacting the veteran Calculus teacher at the flagship high school for final advice 

Today is Friday, the first day of the week on both the Eleven and Gregorian Calendars:

Resolution #1: We take pride in our own work and cite our sources.

I like to believe that my Ethnostats students take pride in their own work today. As for citing their sources, their next Stats current event article assignment isn't today, but it will be soon.

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