I hear many instructors lamenting that their students are not doing their homework to the instructor’s satisfaction. If we agree that homework is an important part of the learning process, then it is important to tackle this problem. Do your students know why they are doing homework? Don’t be so sure that they do. Many students do it because it’s part of the game, because they are told to do it, because they get points for doing it. They should…
I have had a few questions about how I am managing to work all of these early inferential projects into my Intro Stats course. 1) Switching from Chapter Exams to a Midterm and a Final In the first 7 chapters of our textbook I used to give 4 exams. That means that I would use 4 days for exams and approximately 6 days for review. I have 4 days built into my calendar for review (2 days) and the midterm…
This semester I have incorporated a three-pronged strategy in my intro statistics classes: Flip the classroom – having students learn material at home Make the classroom more engaging – using more group activities and Learning Catalytics sessions Focus on early inferential statistics early and often This week began with students learning about the 5-number summary and how to create a boxplot. On Monday we did an activity where students compared two samples of quantitative data in an effort to determine…
My students are wrapping up the part of the course where we cover descriptive statistics. I gave them two sets of data (test scores from two different versions of the same exam) and they spent the day in class computing sample statistics and creating graphs for each sample. Their overall goal was to analyze their results and determine whether there was a significant difference between the two versions or not. Download a pdf of this activity Students compared measures of…
This week I began with a bootstrap project for a paired-difference/matched-pairs scenario. Download a pdf of the Project Here One of my goals is to get students working with data they have collected, so I had students collect prices for 25 identical items at two stores. We used this for one of the investigations. Investigation 1 A researched was investigating whether sons are taller than their fathers. My students were provided with 13 matched pairs. I had them find the…
If you think back to some games you have played, what can be more fun than an unexpected reward? Unexpected rewards can be fun AND motivating. On the day that I pass back the first exam, I walk around with a bag of plastic gold coins. I hand one to each student who earned the full 3 points on the exam. (That means they leveled up by meeting the performance benchmarks on each HW assignment and quiz, and also scored…
Last week we did our third project that focuses on introducing inferential statistics earlier in the semester. Download the Activity (pdf) Here The bootstrap method repeatedly samples from a sample (with replacement) to help develop an interval estimate of any population parameter. For example, if there is a sample of 10 numerical values we select 10 values (with replacement) and compute the mean of that sample. We then repeat that process for a total of 1000 samples. We can then…
Just finished reading this book by Derek Bruff (@derekbruff on Twitter), so I thought I’d share what I wrote on Goodreads. (By the way, if you’d like to be reading buddies, here’s my Goodreads profile page.) Here goes … **************************** Although some of the technology has really changed since this book was published, I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who plans to incorporate classroom response systems into their teaching. Bruff clearly lays out the pros and cons of…
On day 7 of instruction in my intro statistics course we spent the class working through a project comparing two population proportions using resampling. Click here to download a pdf copy of the project: Two Proportion Resampling Hands-On First Mike Sullivan recommends a hands-on simulation before turning to the computers, so I began by using poker chips for this scenario: A random sample of 15 students at my college had 9 female students in it (60% female), while a random…
Last night my intro statistics students worked through an Interactive Reading Assignment for measures of central tendency. In class today they will be working with four data sets and computing various measures of central tendency. To collect their work I will run through a Learning Catalytics module asking them for certain specific answers. My plan is for students to work individually while consulting with each other. If they have different results it will be a great opportunity to check each…