Sam's Blog

Do you have your tickets... to the gun show? #flexin #doyouevenliftbro Please complete this to show you did your homework: Loading... So, let's talk about what makes this project hard: actually collecting data. It's not hard, but somehow, doing it every day is hard. It's easy to miss a day... then two... then all the sudden, you have missed a bunch, and it's scary and you don't want to think about it, so you don't do it. So we are going to preempt all that by putting some work in today to make it hard to forget. First, we will make a Google form. I started it for you, all you is copy it and add your 4 variables . Once you have that, you are going to use a cool feature of Google Sheets to have google email you this form every day. The form will be in the email itself, so all you have to do is open the email, fill out the form, and hit enter. Here are the instructions to follow . Don't be intimidated! You just have to copy and paste some cod...

The audio is too good to make this a gif. So, to be clear, this is the blog post for THURSDAY, 1/28. If you are looking for Tuesday's post, go back a post. I wanted to mention to you all that a mathematician and artificial intelligence researched named Marvin Minsky died on Sunday. Among lots of amazing things he did in his life, he wrote about math education for the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project. Here is that article ; I'd like you to read it for homework. Speaking of death, check out this amazing visualization ! Finally, for classwork, I would like you to go back to Tuesday's blog post, and comment on other people's homework. Specifically do you like the charts they chose? Are they interesting? Any feedback? Homework IMPORTANT: Pick which 5 (or more) variables that you will track for the Feltron project. Think about how you will keep track of them - pen and and notebook? The Reporter App? A pedometer? Also, that Marvin Minsky article is really...

I can't believe you haven't seen this GIF! I love you guys to death, but I am going to start this class without computers because you just hone in for the links to get work done (which I LOVE) but it means that it is hard to communicate information, and a big part of today is talking as a group. What I do for work and our Car Comparison Spreadsheet I work on a website that automates the spreadsheet we did to compare cars, and makes it cooler. I will give you a tour and you tell me what you think! The Feltron Project Do you know what it is? If not, I will explain it, and you can look back about 40 posts to "Feltron Intro", and always, www.feltron.com We need data... so we will do a "quantified self" project and collect information about ourselves. What type of data? ANYTHING! Number of steps per day Number of poops per day time on screens what you ate what you listened to books read tweets tweeted instagram pictures liked cups ...

Ahhhhhhh! Check it out: this message is being pulled from a Google sheet and inserted here, will like five lines of JavaScript (give it a second to load if you don't see it yet): So, just another example of how amazing Google Sheets, and the internet in general is. (If you're curious (meaning, if you want you can ignore all the stuff here in parentheses), here is the sheet it is being pulled from, and you can hit CTRL+SHIFT+C to go to the "Inspect Element" screen, and look for a Script tag).  tag, which tells the page how to do stuff (in this case, pull information from a Google Sheet). It uses Sheetsu ). Today Todo We survey the class to find each person's Name Height Age Foot size in inches (no need to measure, just use this chart ) Everyone makes a Google Sheet where a ROW represents a student, and COLUMNS represent attributes of the student (their name, height, age, and foot size). Make two new rows at the end, for MEAN STUDENT and ...

Hi Statistics & Data Viz Class, If you are looking for today's lesson, it is the previous post. I just wanted to put this up to say "thank you." I really appreciate the effort, energy, and enthusiasm that you have been bringing to class. I feel great about how class has been going, especially today's. I hope you do too. At this rate, we are going to get to cover so many cool things, and I can't wait to see what you do with bigger projects. Thanks again, Sam PS - since it was pretty much unanimous, I called about the Tiguan. Bad news - it sold yesterday!!! D:

I'm tired and this is really funny Anyway. Today you are going to learn about SPREADSHEETS! YAY! "What are spreadsheets?" you ask? Behold! ...it's a grid of boxes, called "cells". "But wait!" you naively protest, "that isn't exciting or interesting!" Ok, I grant you it may not be exciting, but it is interesting. Spreadsheets are oddly powerful. They changed the face of commerce since their widespread adoption in the 1980s (there's a good podcast about that that we can listen to sometime if we have extra time) Spreadsheets count as a programming language, and are the most widely-used one. The vast majority (>90%) of companies use spreadsheets. And finally: They do all the work for you! Can you imagine how much you have to add, subtract, multiply, divide, calculate means, etc when you are running a business? You pay for things, you sell things, but the price of things change. What will the thi...

Histograms? That sounds hard... Actually, everything we are going to talk about today is easy. Histograms are a frequency table, that is, the height represents how frequently  that value appeared. For example: Apparently, the most common height for a Black Cherry tree in this study was between 75-80 ft. Let's get some data about the class: maybe "when do you wake up?," "how tall are you?," and/or anything else interesting. Now we'll chunk the data - divide it into bins. In the cherry tree example, the bins are "trees of height 60-65 feet, 65-70 feet,... etc" As a side note, when I say 60-65 and 65-70 are separate bins, what do I mean? Where does 65 go? Alright, let's pick one of the measurements, put them in order from smallest to greatest, and find a few things: The minimum (the smallest value) The maximum (the largest value) The median (median is the one in the middle) The upper quartile (the number between the med...

Good job today at mathketball - you're all winners! For homework, I would like you to do some review on Khan Academy. I have a list of concepts, but they are in an image. For each concept, just search it from the search bar at the top of www.khanacademy.com Getting more done now will mean less homework during the week. Do at least the first 4 by Monday morning. 

So, there was a bit of a miscommunication/misunderstanding. I thought only last Tuesday's class was from 9:30-10:30, but it turns out that is the case for every Tuesday class... unexpected! Anyway, because of that, and a meeting at my other job, I will not be here for some of class. Here is the plan: Sign up for Khan Academy if you do not have an account or can't get into it Go to  khanacademy.org/coaches There, in the "Add a coach" field, enter the class code V6ZGZG In a new tab, go to Tuva Labs Click "Sign Up" in the upper-right The class code is qs0i7  You are now signed up for the accounts you need! Hopefully I was able to guide everyone through that. Now, you are gonna be SUPER CHILL for Liz as she keeps an eye on you. Classwork Go to this Tuva Labs dataset Play with the chart to answer the following questions: Loading... Homework Log in to Khan Academy and do the following exercises: Constructing Scatter Plots and...

Well, Assuming there are 10 students in class this trimester, everyone did their first and second assignment! Good. You also did them right away. That is interesting... See, last trimester, here is what happened with the second assignment: I think it bodes well that none of you procrastinated. 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. But I am right. 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 form again!  Really, every time you ...

Last trimester, Rocky convinced me to start every class with a gif, so here is today's: That is Poppy, my daughter. You will see many gifs of her. Today in class 1. "What's wrong with these charts?" Round-table discussion 2. "Sam Info" Check out this info graphic . I have been collecting data about myself for my own Feltron project. Then answer these two questions: Loading... Homework Make sure a PARENT fills out the following: Loading...

Hi! I'm Sam! I'm teaching your math class this trimester. What class is that? Well, the long-winded name I came up with is Math as Communication: Data Visualization, Statistics, and Probability What does that mean? By the end of the trimester, you will be able to: Effectively read graphs Understand large data sets by using measures of central tendency Communicate likelihood using probability Interpret and communicate data sets by producing interesting and clear graphs and other data visualizations How will you learn this? Well, you will Have homework almost every night Work effectively in class so homework can be minimal Take a few quizzes Do a project called the Feltron Here is an example Feltron: BUT WHY??? It's really easy to communicate opinions. You just say what you feel. You don't have to think, and you don't worry about being wrong. Watch this:  Drake is the worst rapper of all time. Justin Bieber isn't as terrib...

This diagram sums up much of what I want to teach: source and explanation