Tag: #180

  • Central Limit Theorem Love

    Besides the usual quote on the board today, I also have this math pickup line: How can I know hundreds of digits of pi and not know your phone number?  I am featuring a new math love / pickup line each day this week (some days will have more than one). If you want the…

  • Building & solving polynomials

    This post is a branch of yesterday’s post on polynomials. As were are teaching this year, I am giving them some tough, torturous problems that are about incorporating all the math from previous units into one problem each time. Yes, I want every problem to be a review of the previous year’s materials. And it…

  • Polynomials in Alg 2

    I haven’t posted in a while, mainly because I am just so happy with how my classes are going. I will focus on Alg 2 here, because these awesome learners are just knocking my socks off. I am in the polynomial unit, knee deep in graphing, and increasing, decreasing, relative mins, relative max’s, absolute mins,…

  • Tired – So tired

    Today wiped me out. I had all 3 sections of AP Stats today, and I heard the same comment from all 3 classes. It went something like this, “I never understood the z score when we did it in Alg 2. My teacher just said, memorize the formula and get find the number.” Sigh. That…

  • Pictionary in Stats

    I tortured my learners with a game, a game that was awesome and they all agreed was worth while. We played a Stats Pictionary! I used this document.  Ch 5 – various distributions- Pictionary   I created these distributions using the Illuminations Applet called plopit.   http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/PlopIt/ Here are my rules: 1. Each pair gets one…

  • Greedy Greedy learners – a good thing

    That’s right, they got greedy, and lost. Well, everyone gained, knowledge and skills that is.  Today (and tomorrow in one period) in AP Stats we are playing The game of Greed. This is a great game, that challenges the learners in the end to make box plots and comparison statements about the created data. You end up…

  • Mixed bag today

    Today was a mixed bag of, well, weirdness and frustration with some awesomeness. I will start with the awesomeness. This morning at 7:15am, a learner from last year walked in and asked for help with his college math class. Loved it. I worked with him for about an hour (into the first class of the…

  • Torturing, er, teaching today

    All models are wrong, but some are useful. George E.P. Box AP Statistics I was able to use this quote today in class. I was happy. My learners were happy too, well, mostly happy. Well, okay, not happy at all at first. At first they hated me. They were struggling with learning how to do…

  • Notes, Pacing & lesson idea

    One thing I am really working on in AP Stats is the amount of notes, the lack of notes, and the engagement of my learners. AP Stats is one of those courses where the amount of vocab to assimilate is so huge, that it cannot all be done by activities. I have found that a…

  • Relaying in Stats, Melting down in Alg

    You are here! That is my AP Stats objectives board for the next few weeks. Today and yesterday we finished up Categorical data analysis with Relay Cards. It was very successful. I had many learners telling me they understood what they were doing, and they were saying this even though they were making mistakes in…