Lots of bad advice in this thread. As a fellow mathematician who has taught intro stats before, and am currently teaching it (at a large research university) again this summer, here is my take:
1) Be prepared for the fact that many will not have taken a math class in many years, some 5 or more. They will recall little from their previous math classes other than intuition. Their arithmetic skills are poor. Be sure you are evaluating them on their understanding of the stats material, and be forgiving of arithmetic errors
2) They will be heterogeneous. Some will prefer abstract formulae, others will want to see things in words. Give both. Some will like to read the book, others will like lectures. I am linking to relevant Khan Academy videos on my website along with the date of the lecture they go along with. Anything you can do to come at things from various angles will increase the proportion of the class that understands it.
3) Try and explain the big picture. I am often motivating things with social science "experiments", or medical experiments. Find out what kinds of examples click with your students, and use those. While their arithmetic skills are often abysmal, they generally grasp quite readily the major ideas, how one should apply them, and when. They just get lost a bit in details.
4) Don't get bogged down teaching too much probability. It's an easy trap to fall in to.
5) Have fun. I've found teaching this course to be more work, but rewarding. A lot of these students have a near phobia of anything math, it's nice to see things clicking for them and them grasping the big ideas, if not the specific computations.
Okay, back to writing tomorrow's lecture...
P.S. Neither math nor statistics are "natural science", much less any kind of science.
I clicked through the first couple links and didn't see a picture of the hardware. I assumed that Arduino meant small.
Actually though, it doesn't seem to be too much of a stretch to use an Android phone as your internet-facing computer. Probably mostly an academic (hah!) concern though, as you point out.
As faculty, if including more than one student in an email, we are required to input students' email addresses in the BCC line to protect their privacy. We get a nice reminder whenever we write an email from the online course content system:
Important Privacy Notice:
If you copy email addresses for use in another email program, you must use those addresses in the 'bcc:' field when sending email to ensure that student email addresses remain private in accordance with FERPA policy.
That's not right. When anyone writes sqrt, they mean he principal root, a 1-1 function. So sqrt(1) really is 1. The problem is that the principal root, sqrt(x^2) is abs(x). So sqrt(i^4)=abs(i^2)=abs(-1)=1.
Unless you and everyone else on the route start buying twice as much stuff online, necessitating two trucks. Which one package gets the footprint for the extra truck?
What's the point in teaching a 200 person class? You can't interact with them at all
On the contrary, I've seen it done successfully in calculus courses. It of course involved doing something other than just talking at them for an hour, which is what 95+% of these things end up being, but it is not impossible.
If it is only the software generating $100,000 per day, why did he write it for them as opposed to just writing it for himself? Is it beyond the realm of possibility that these highly paid co-workers are actually adding some value?
Likewise. I first started programming when I was in high school on my TI-89. First in the horrendous TI-Basic, and then I found TIGCC. Not sure what I'd be doing today if I hadn't got interested in programming then.
30 mph walkways put today's tortoise-like speed ranges of.5-.83 m/s to shame.
Can't we at least get this in consistent units? For instance, "80,000 furlong per fortnight walkways put today's tortoise-like speed ranges of 3000-5000 furlongs per fortnight to shame".
Maybe they should just put warning labels on all the rocks. "Serpentine, the state rock of California, contains substances known to the state of California to cause cancer".
The human brain is actually pretty good at filtering out noise if you give it a chance. Just watch the games and don't worry about the vuvuzelas and before long you won't even notice them.
I notice them a little at the beginning of the game, but even more so right after the half. Usually by the hour mark I've completely phased them out again though.
People always say this but I'm now a phd student and the only time I ever had a class where we used a professor's book was one class where the book was actually out of print so he just gave us photocopies of it.
I TA'd for a professor who wrote a book and used it for his own class. The bookstore could not obtain the book in time for the beginning of the semester, and I suggested we just photocopy the first couple chapters for the students until the books came in. Apparently the publisher (who owned the copyright as part of the contract) wouldn't allow this.
Also, for the post higher up about professors being happy to write new editions--not only are their royalties surprisingly low, but often in the initial contract they agree to produce new editions at the request of the publisher. So they often have little say in whether a new edition is printed or not.
Slashdot Mirror
whooping cough, which does little or no damage to your lungs
My wife, who has chronic bronchitis stemming from when she had pertussis in college, would disagree with you.
Lots of bad advice in this thread. As a fellow mathematician who has taught intro stats before, and am currently teaching it (at a large research university) again this summer, here is my take: 1) Be prepared for the fact that many will not have taken a math class in many years, some 5 or more. They will recall little from their previous math classes other than intuition. Their arithmetic skills are poor. Be sure you are evaluating them on their understanding of the stats material, and be forgiving of arithmetic errors 2) They will be heterogeneous. Some will prefer abstract formulae, others will want to see things in words. Give both. Some will like to read the book, others will like lectures. I am linking to relevant Khan Academy videos on my website along with the date of the lecture they go along with. Anything you can do to come at things from various angles will increase the proportion of the class that understands it. 3) Try and explain the big picture. I am often motivating things with social science "experiments", or medical experiments. Find out what kinds of examples click with your students, and use those. While their arithmetic skills are often abysmal, they generally grasp quite readily the major ideas, how one should apply them, and when. They just get lost a bit in details. 4) Don't get bogged down teaching too much probability. It's an easy trap to fall in to. 5) Have fun. I've found teaching this course to be more work, but rewarding. A lot of these students have a near phobia of anything math, it's nice to see things clicking for them and them grasping the big ideas, if not the specific computations. Okay, back to writing tomorrow's lecture... P.S. Neither math nor statistics are "natural science", much less any kind of science.
Article is short on details, but at least they include a link to the paper on the arxiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0403069
"Icons drive the Linux OS"? Really? I don't have any icons on my desktop (Fluxbox), and one can run Linux just fine without any sort of GUI.
Actually though, it doesn't seem to be too much of a stretch to use an Android phone as your internet-facing computer. Probably mostly an academic (hah!) concern though, as you point out.
It's bad enough that my students want to use the calculator on their phones during an exam. Now they can network their calculators?
Important Privacy Notice: If you copy email addresses for use in another email program, you must use those addresses in the 'bcc:' field when sending email to ensure that student email addresses remain private in accordance with FERPA policy.
That's not right. When anyone writes sqrt, they mean he principal root, a 1-1 function. So sqrt(1) really is 1. The problem is that the principal root, sqrt(x^2) is abs(x). So sqrt(i^4)=abs(i^2)=abs(-1)=1.
How many miles-per-gas-turbine does it get and how many gas turbines are needed to fill the tank?
That number is so misleading. We really want to be talking in gas-turbines-per-mile so we can make a meaningful comparison between vehicles.
Unless you and everyone else on the route start buying twice as much stuff online, necessitating two trucks. Which one package gets the footprint for the extra truck?
What's the point in teaching a 200 person class? You can't interact with them at all
On the contrary, I've seen it done successfully in calculus courses. It of course involved doing something other than just talking at them for an hour, which is what 95+% of these things end up being, but it is not impossible.
That may have had just a little bit to do with us overthrowing their democratically elected government and installing a dictator of our choosing.
No, global warming is caused by the decreasing number of pirates.
Computers only help out in crazy high level classes where you have to start doing things like matrix manipulations, etc.
That's not exactly 'crazy high level'. Matrix Algebra is usually a sophomore level class, and a watered down one at that.
If it is only the software generating $100,000 per day, why did he write it for them as opposed to just writing it for himself? Is it beyond the realm of possibility that these highly paid co-workers are actually adding some value?
Dreams? We had to stay awake all night to keep a lookout!
Likewise. I first started programming when I was in high school on my TI-89. First in the horrendous TI-Basic, and then I found TIGCC. Not sure what I'd be doing today if I hadn't got interested in programming then.
30 mph walkways put today's tortoise-like speed ranges of .5-.83 m/s to shame.
Can't we at least get this in consistent units? For instance, "80,000 furlong per fortnight walkways put today's tortoise-like speed ranges of 3000-5000 furlongs per fortnight to shame".
Maybe they should just put warning labels on all the rocks. "Serpentine, the state rock of California, contains substances known to the state of California to cause cancer".
Once you show a law can be used to convict even one innocent person, the law becomes unenforceable in court.
Really? So since innocent people have been exonerated after having been convicted of murder, murder laws are now unenforceable in court?
The human brain is actually pretty good at filtering out noise if you give it a chance. Just watch the games and don't worry about the vuvuzelas and before long you won't even notice them.
I notice them a little at the beginning of the game, but even more so right after the half. Usually by the hour mark I've completely phased them out again though.
People always say this but I'm now a phd student and the only time I ever had a class where we used a professor's book was one class where the book was actually out of print so he just gave us photocopies of it.
I TA'd for a professor who wrote a book and used it for his own class. The bookstore could not obtain the book in time for the beginning of the semester, and I suggested we just photocopy the first couple chapters for the students until the books came in. Apparently the publisher (who owned the copyright as part of the contract) wouldn't allow this.
Also, for the post higher up about professors being happy to write new editions--not only are their royalties surprisingly low, but often in the initial contract they agree to produce new editions at the request of the publisher. So they often have little say in whether a new edition is printed or not.
Thank you so much. I had tried the mozplugger workaround to no avail. There's an open bug on the issue that Google does not seem inclined to do anything about: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=19587
Is this version still unable to open a PDF in Linux?
Also, it sounds like it would be fun for adults as well :-D
Oh it definitely is, the phrase just made it sound like it was exclusively for kids-which it really isn't :)