Students Generating Their Own Data

Students Generating Their Own Data

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Lately I have been thinking about how great a job we have done in modernizing our intro stats courses, and how we have not done that in our algebra courses. In statistics we have embraced technological changes, such as transitioning from the binomial formula to binomial tables to using technology like StatCrunch/TI to compute probabilities. In algebra, that sort of transition is far from wide spread. When students have more ownership and control, they are more motivated to learn. In…

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Draw the Line Between Pre-Class and In-Class

Draw the Line Between Pre-Class and In-Class

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It’s Flipped Friday, where I update how my flipped classes are going. If you want to see how my Intro Stats course is going, check out the day-by-day posts on my StatBlog. This week I had planned to cover two sections in my intermediate algebra class – multiplication and division of radical expressions, and solving radical equations. I decided to devote half of the two-hour block to the first section, and the rest of the class to the second section….

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Bootstrapping with StatCrunch

Bootstrapping with StatCrunch

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The Bootstrap Method The bootstrap method is a very useful tool to have an introductory statistics class. The bootstrap method begins with a sample of size n. Then a large number (I use 10,000 in my classes) of samples of size n are drawn with replacement from that sample. A sample statistic is computed for each sample. A typical use of bootstrapping involves the mean, but this procedure can be applied to the median, quartiles, variance, … Percentiles can be…

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Wildcard Wednesday: Wolfram|Alpha

Wildcard Wednesday: Wolfram|Alpha

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Last week I came across a Wired article: Wolfram|Alpha (& AI) Is Making It Easier To Cheat, and reading the article brought so many thoughts to mind about teaching mathematics in today’s world. Here goes … 1) We need to make sure that students understand that HW is a learning tool, not just something that earns points. — George Woodbury (@georgewoodbury) August 25, 2017 I feel that we often assume that students know why they do homework and that they…

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TBT – Reflection

TBT – Reflection

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The cycle of learning that I use with my students is one of Discover – Engage – Reflect, and today I want to focus on Reflect. It is hard to imagine that true learning can happen without some sort of reflection. What have we done? How is it similar to what we have done before? How is it different? What are my key takeaways? What concepts are not as clear as they need to be? On Monday I revisited using…

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MyLab Monday – Personalized Homework

MyLab Monday – Personalized Homework

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Last week I made a post about using quizzes in MyLab. Today I will expand on that topic to include personalized homework. In MyLab you can use the results of a quiz to load a personalized homework assignment. These are powerful tools, as they help students to determine which topics will require further study and then generates a homework assignment focused on those topics. Creating Personalized Homework I begin by making the quiz first. In my current algebra classes I…

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Recommend an iPad Screen Capture App?

Recommend an iPad Screen Capture App?

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Requesting your help … I’m trying to find an iPad app for making/recording screencasts for my students. So for today’s Technology Thursday, I’d like for you to recommend an app for doing this. Please leave your recommendation as a comment. Thanks – George

Learning from Mistakes

Learning from Mistakes

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I tried something new in my intermediate algebra class. Over the last 3 classes we covered absolute value equations, absolute value inequalities, and graphing absolute value functions. I tried to tie these ideas together through the magic of Desmos, and although it started strong, it could have ended better. We began with the equation . Students solved this by hand and we went over the solution. Then I had students use Desmos to graph and determine where it intersected the…

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TBT – Graphing Absolute Value Functions

TBT – Graphing Absolute Value Functions

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This week in my intermediate algebra class we covered graphing absolute value functions. I began by having students create an x-y table for . We plotted the points and they could tell the shape of the graph, and I asked them which point was the most important point. They knew it was the turning point of the graph. So far, so good. Next, I put up this equation: . I then gave them a few minutes to figure out where…

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MyLab Monday – Quizzes

MyLab Monday – Quizzes

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Since the beginning of MyMathLab, I have incorporated quizzes into my courses. Creating a quiz is identical to creating a homework assignment, and many MyLab Math texts come with quizzes already loaded to copy into your course. Quizzes do differ in a couple of ways from homework assignments. Learning Aids Learning aids are automatically turned off. Students who over rely on “Help Me Solve This” or “View An Example” will hopefully realize this while taking the quiz. (I like to…

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