Okay, so maybe I’m still feeling aggressive because of the steroid shot I got yesterday, but I’ve got fire burning and I want to let it out! Watch out AP Statistics exam, hear me roar! I will note that I actually expect to be roundly disagreed with on this one, and I can totally acceptRead More
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Does the AP Stats exam discriminate against confidence intervals?
Lots of AP Stat problems, both multiple choice and free response, make it clear what inference procedure they expect you to use for a problem, be it a hypothesis test, confidence interval, etc. But there is a brand of AP Free Response problem that claims to be agnostic. An excellent example is 2012 #4, copiedRead More
Grading an AP hypothesis test problem – A Twitter Story
I had a question about how AP readers would grade an AP Statistics question. The story below is how Twitter helped me get the answer, in great detail, within a couple of hours. Twitter: you are awesome. (AP Stats exam, in some ways you are less awesome. Some of your obsessions make sense to me.Read More
Geometry Theorem Posters
I asked twitter if anybody had any geometry theorem posters, but no response yet. So I decided to make my own. These are numbered using the number scheme from my rather ancient textbook, so you’ll probably need to modify to use them in your classroom, but if you like them as a start, feel freeRead More
Ho’s and Ha’s and Other Claims
Hypothesis Tests are big part of most statistics curricula, even as they have somewhat started to fade from favor in the statistics world at large. One of the reason I think for their slow fade is that they are often pretty easy to do while not understanding. There are many ways to help with this, andRead More
Exploring the “Large Population” rule – a problem to aid students
In my last post I explored the “Large Population” or “10%” condition for statistical inference using the traditional formulas, specifically as it relates to proportions. After much twitter conversation, I am coming around to the point of view that this should be explored deeply with students, if possible, as it will generate good conversations about precision, samplingRead More
Using simulation to understand a statistical rule of thumb
Inspired by Bob Lochel’s beautiful investigation on when binomial distributions appear normal, I started exploring, for myself, the other rule of thumb in statistical inference: the “Large Population” or “10% rule”. For the uninitiated, a (very) brief explanation. Consider a population of 10 people where 70% of them like chocolate chip cookies – that is, 7 people.Read More
How a tiny connection in geometry made me feel like a master teacher
[latexpage] This is my eleventh year teaching. And I’m starting to realize that I may be finally starting to develop, at least partially, into a “master teacher.” http://giphy.com/gifs/gilmoregirls-netflix-gilmore-girls-l0ErPVBvoWGGsLzJ6 I cringe a little bit at that description – I mean, I still forget to take attendance pretty much every class, and sometimes there’s still just noRead More
Exploring quantitative data via simulation
I’m working hard on the CPM Statistics text, but I want to take a break from generating new lessons and content to talk about a sequence I just finished writing for the text that I’m excited about. This sequence occurs near the end of the year – students have learned about sampling distributions, confidence intervals,Read More
Politics
I’m not dealing well with this election. I haven’t been able to grade papers, or lesson plan, or work on writing my fall exams; all I’ve been able to do is read and ruminate, with some breaks for computer programming (one of the few tasks that has the power to distract me long enough forRead More