Sam's Blog

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: what I want to do in every awkward situation... 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: 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. 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? 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 mathematica...

9/28/15 Monday Check in: Friday class & Homework Classwork: As long as we’re talking climate change... If someone tells you they don’t believe humans are causing it, you might want to ask them if smoking is bad for you. Why? There is as much evidence that humans are causing global warming as there is evidence that smoking causes cancer (you don’t have to click that link, I just like to put it up). Anyway, here’s a chart: It is entitled “Breakdown of the anthropic greenhouse gas emissions by gas, in billion tons carbon equivalent, in 2004” - it is a breakdown of the greenhouse gases emitted in 2004 that humans are responsible for. What’s the biggest greenhouse gas? What’s all that CO2 doing, and where does it go? A lot of it goes into the ocean, which seems better than the air, and it is... up to a point. The more CO2 in the ocean, the more acidic it gets (And the more acidic it gets, the lower its ph gets). That is fine... until it’s not. At some...

Woah, Friday math class came outta nowhere! loading... ^That get's funnier every time. Anyway, you're gonna do some practice finding medians and estimating means, then you will work on your homework. Practice  (Individual): Find the median of the following lists of numbers 100, 200, 300 35, 34, 35 92, 86, 75, 46, 38, 28, 10 2, 4, 6, 8 100, 200, 300, 400 3, 13, 7, 5, 21, 23, 39, 23, 40, 23, 14, 12, 56, 23, 293, 13, 7, 5, 21, 23, 23, 40, 23, 14, 12, 56, 23, 29 Estimate the mean of the following: 4, 7, 8, 8, 10 I'll do this one for you, and write out my thoughts. The median is 8. The two bigger numbers are 8 and 10, the two smaller numbers are 4 and 7. The smaller numbers are further from 8 than the bigger numbers, so the mean gets "pulled down by them"... So I would guess 7. (The actual mean is 7.4, so this is a good estimate) 100, 200, 300 2, 4, 6, 8 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 100 76, 79, 82, 87, 89, 91, 91, 95, 102 Share Any tricks or...

Check in with homework - did you do any? did you do extra? what were your thoughts? Do you have anything you can share or explain to the class? Warm up: Heads up - today I mention acids and acidity. I use the word “acidic.” I could also say it has a low ph. Examples of acidic liquids, or liquids with low ph, are black coffee, Coca Cola, lemonade, vinegar, lemonade, and, at the really acidic end of the spectrum (really low ph) is battery acid. Let’s talk about the drought: Sierra Nevada snowpack is much worse than thought: a 500-year low Don't pray for rain -- pray for snow. Melted snow is 30% of California's water supply Drought reality check: Source of drinking water for more than 23 million Californians is at 33% capacity Find the Mean, Range and Median of the most recent 8 years of this data on temperature (in degrees F) and precipitation (in inches) in California. Computing all that was rough, and hopefully gave you some insight... but once ...

Announcements:   Everyone has been doing their homework, it looks good, I am happy! I notice some of you have trouble spelling. However, you spell phonetically, and I get what you mean, so that's fine. Don't worry about spelling during math because I need you to focus on the math, and not get self-conscious about spelling. Also, about a word I may use: set . It just means a collection. If I say a set of numbers, I just mean a group of them. Nothing fancy. Sometimes I will show things, like numbers, are related by grouping them together with these grouping symbols: {}. Again, it just means they all go together, like so: {2, 3, 4, 10}. Also, for today's lesson I mention "salary." That is how much someone gets paid in one year for working. Questions for you: How is class going so far? How is doing homework this way, with the surveys online? [Note to self: really listen and don’t just think about what you are going to say] Today: Graphs are abo...

NOTICE: This is for Monday, 9/21 in class and for homework due Tuesday, 9/22. If you are looking for Thursday's homework; scroll down! I guess we have to check if we all did our homework. I hope you did! I try to make it very do-able. Now let's talk about that homework some more. Check this out: Way to go Nick and Matthew, getting your homework done right away! One thing worth mentioning is that this was a “ Donut chart .” It is a type of pie chart , it just has a hole cut out of the center. I use donut charts over pie charts every time because I think they look better - but you might not. Please, show me you get what's going on by filling out this form (you will be filling it out a lot, so don't lose this link (it will be on the blog, right here)). Moving on, here is another chart [ source ]. This type of chart is called a horizontal bar chart . Discuss: What is caffeine? What is this chart telling you? Do you like the way it looks? Then:  fill out the f...

Here is my lesson plan from today. Feel free to skip to the bottom of this post where the homework is! September 16 2015 Thoughts On what we are doing: We are a team We have a project I am the project manager for this team On rules: I don’t think we should start with rules. Let’s all keep in mind that we should respect each other, ourselves, and the space we are in, and maybe we will all act in such a way that we don’t need rules. If we do need rules, we’ll figure them out as needed. How to ask to eat or go to the bathroom in such a way that it will make a teacher like you more (hint: respectfully). Goals For each team member to: Become more comfortable and confident with the idea of themselves as “someone who does math” Develop their problem solving skills Practice thinking rationally Translate math words and symbols into plain language Feel comfortable communicating about numbers Especially big groups of numbers ...

Review of what we did in class: The survey found in the post below this one. Stay or Switch, the Monty Hall Problem  - played with this and became familiar with it. The Monty Hall Problem is from The Monty Hall show (weird, right?). The show is from the 1950's, but the problem and its answer are from 1990. Here is a link to Marilyn Vos Savant's page,  and her solution to the problem, that resulted in a bunch of condescending, chauvinist responses from male math professors. Homework: Conditional Probability - For homework, be able to describe - in plain language - what all the sliders do on this. For example, the first slider changes the size of the red platform, so less of the balls hit it. You don't need to write anything, just play around with it and get a feel for it, but don't worry about what it says, it looks complicated and intimidating.  You don't have to read it, just play with the interactive animation. Great first class!

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