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Feltron Intro - Tuesday 9/29/15

Rocky asked if every blog post could start with a gif; I like that idea and will try to remember to do it. I'm just gonna start with my favorite:



I think yesterday felt like more material than I anticipated. I don't want you to start feeling overwhelmed. Today, I would like to slow things down and:


  1. Tell you that I think you all are doing very well. The "understanding charts" spreadsheet that has all the answers all of you submitted looks really impressive.
  2. Check in - material. You don't have to bluff... how are things going? Charts in general? The specific tool we have been playing with (Tuva)? Mean, Median, Mode, and Range?
  3. Check in - math in general. One of my goals is to show you something about how math works: even if you have a hard time doing arithmetic or getting problems right in a math class, you still might be very good at making and understanding charts, and that is a very important mathematical skill.
    • Conversely, if you have generally done well in math, but don't understand graphs and charts, you might be a little surprised by how hard you have to work to get them. Everyone's brain is different.
  4. Check in - you. I don't get to see you outside of class, so let me know what's up. Anything interesting happening in your life?
  5. Dylan, Skye, Dashiel, and Esme, pick one or two group members
    • In your groups, (using one Chromebook if necessary), answer one group member's question about something tricky from the last few classes
      • It can be about computing mean, median, mode, range, or graphing, line of best fit, what goes where on graphs...
  6. I will show you the idea I have for a project: I think we should try to each do a version of the Feltron report, which Nicholas Felton puts out every year. See the following, stunning examples:
Spend some time really looking at these, you don't have a lot of other work!

2013

2005


2012


So, the idea would be to measure various things in your life, and then chart them!

For HOMEWORK you will fill the following form out to get the ball rolling on this project:




Comments

Unknown said…
you didn't tell us to give our name
Unknown said…
I guess we should just write it in one of the input fields...
Unknown said…
Oops! This is the right way to handle this, at the beginning or end just add "by the way, this is Sam" or, you know, whoever you are.

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