When the kid doesn't pass...make passing easier?

STOP!!!!! Read this article before continuing

So your student got a B+ in a rigorous, difficult, challenging environment. This is unacceptable because it is not an A?!?!?! So what's the solution... Fight fight fight and make it easier to get an A. I hope I am not the only one that sees something terribly wrong with this. Please consider the following situations as they relate to this article...

So apparently I have heard that there are too many people failing the PA Driver's License Exam. The solution is that those failing the test got together and fought PennDOT, successfully changing the driver's test requirements to: drive forward 100 ft, put the car in reverse, turn on the windshield wipers, successfully make a right-hand turn. Immediate ramifications are not known.

SAT's have come under fire because so many students are not meeting their college's SAT requirements. Let's get together and make the SAT an easier test. That way, more kids will get higher scores and be qualified to get into the colleges that they want.

The end result from both situations is an "inignoranted"(totally made that word up) population. Okay, so the driver's license one is a little far-fetched, but I'm not sure the SAT example is totally out of line here.

Rigor is what makes the best the best, the not-so best the not-so best, the average the average, and so on....Without rigor we have no means of determining who the best is, we just are certain that everybody can achieve the standard, and nobody has demonstrated greatness. These parents have defined "fairness" as "everyone gets a trophy/everyone gets an A". An A is exactly that, achieved by the best and brightest, some work really hard to arrive there, some do not need to. Not once in this article was it mentioned that parents encouraged their kids to get better...do a little bit more to get that extra 2 percentage points to EARN the A.

It is often confusing about "Who deserves an A", and I think that definition is different between parent, teacher, and student. Parent and student share a similar definition...my kid works really hard so they deserve an A. In an odd counterexample, what if they work really hard and are learning the concept(s) the wrong way? Should these hard workers not be accountable for content knowledge? Teacher definition of an A is essentially the students that show high-level mastery of content. If that is debatable (that 89%), work-ethic is examined...the rationale of which is that if the student is a hard worker, they will eventually achieve high-level mastery.

In conclusion, I feel the need to address my grading practice. In my gradebook, pre-homework/project grade, there were about 10 kids that had an A average. This pre-homework/project grade is fairly indicative of your master of content. In terms of the AP Exam an A pre-HW would indicate a 5, B a 4, C a 3, D a 2, and F a 1. This is something not set in stone however, and with some preparation for the AP Exam through use of a review book(Barron's) can increase your exam score by 1 to 2. After homework and project, your grade reflects the amount of work that you have done, and the quality of product you have produced. This is minimally relevant to taking the AP test, but very necessary for your future development (college/career).

My job as an educator is not to give you an A, it is to prepare you for college. You need to be put through a high level of rigor so that when you get to college, you have been exposed to a rigorous courseload. If we are not rigorous in our teaching practice, we are not preparing you for college. Relaxing our standards would indicate that we are sending you to college less prepared.

Happy Snow Day,
Mr. C

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I awoke this morning in awful health...I'll spare you the details. At about 6:45pm, I decided I would check the Wiki and see if anything had gone on today. To my absolute amazement, there were several updates to the Project pages by a number of groups, and I must say, they look awesome!!!!!!

What's really amamzing is the fact that I have not necessarily "demonstrated" any of the skills needed to create a page. A huge compliment to your ability to use a relatively new technology. You guys are awesome, and so are your experimental design projects!!! Keep up the good work.

<---Lucy says good job!!! Really, I am not a crazy dog person, I just wanted to add some multimedia feel and this was a great picture of the dog. Pretty sure she wanted something from me.

With regard to the Chapter 15 Quiz, grades are posted as of yesterday on HAC(Home Access Center). I intend to hand them back to you on Friday. Also on Friday we will discuss the "faux quiz", on Chapter 16. The intention there was to give you something that provided an alternate context to the standard dice rolling exercises we've been doing for homework. Your experimental design projects will be graded over the weekend and entered into HAC at that time. They are going to be on the 2nd marking period. Sadly, your grade on the project will appear as a zero until it is graded, so please be patient. Finally, on the subject of grades, your homework grade is factored in as of Friday as well. The intent of this paragraph was so that I do not spend class time discussing this. Anyone asking in class will be referred to the blog.

Wow, fairly serious post. Here are three great links to some talks given at "TED", a conference of the smartest people in the world sharing their ideas. If you have 20 minutes to spare, that's how long it will take to view one video. I suppose I should say that you should view at your own risk and if you are offended by any of the content found here, it is not required that you watch any of it, or all of it, or some of it. I am simply posting it because I think there are some stat students that would enjoy and find it enlightening.

Juries Fooled By Statistics

No More Boring Data

Do Schools Ruin Creativity

I think most videos can be found here as well (http://www.ted.com/)

-Mr. C

Experimental Design Projects

Hey everybody! I wanted to touch base as far as submission of your Experimental Design projects and answer some general questions that you may have. You are just going to submit your writeup of your project including everything from the scoring rubric found on the Wiki. There will only be project presentations for those students that are doing the Experimental Design project for Graduation Project credit.

There will be three ways to submit your project...
1. Via the Wiki: you can type your writeup onto the wiki itself by editing your group page, or you may upload the document. For directions on how to do that, click here for a short video

College Football Bowl Picks - No school related content here

Oklahoma 57,349 Florida 35
Oklahoma has too many weapons on offense. The only one we know of is Sam Bradford. Seriously...high scoring game and I like Stoops (can't stand Urban Meyer)
UPDATE: Would love to change this pick now that Demarco Murray isn't playing. It'll be a close game, and the backup halfbacks are nothing to sneeze at.

Ohio State 28 Texas 17
Go Bucks! Texas leaves game saying "Wait...Teams play defense?"

'Bama 38 Utah 21 (Ouch...Actual Score Utah 31 'Bama 17. Had a lot to do with the best lineman in the country not playing. Hey, I almost got it right the backwards way.)

Virginia Tech 31 Cincinatti 21 (actual VT 20 Cin 7)


USC 17 Penn State 14 (actual USC 38 PSU 24)
I'll refrain from commentary on this one until Jan. 6

No commentary or score for the rest of them... (Update: Man did I miss all of these irrelevant bowl games. Good for those teams that showed up on game day - Ole Miss, Iowa, LSU, Notre Dame, TCU. Teams that didn't show up: Georgia Tech, Oregon State and Pittsburgh in the same game, BYU, South Carolina. The rest were good games that were pretty entertaining)
Ball St. over Tulsa
Buffalo over UConn
East Carolina over Kentucky
Texas Tech over Ole Miss (good game here)
Georgia over Michigan State
Clemson over Nebraska
South Carolina over Iowa
Georgia Tech over LSU
Minnesota beats Kansas
Boston College over Vandy
Pitt beats Oregon State (Oregon State is not that good!)
Air Force over Houston
Oklahoma St. over Oregon (more than 5,000 points will be scored here)
Nevada over Maryland
Western Michigan over Rice (randomly generated a number between 1 & 2)
Northwestern over Mizzou
N.C. State beats Rutgers
Northern Illinois over Louisiana Tech
Miami beats Cal (look out for Miami in 2-3 years)
UNC over WVU (like this matchup for the early bowl games)
Florida State over Wisconsin
Central Mich. over Florida Atlantic
Hawaii over Notre Dame
TCU over Boise St.
Troy over Southern Miss.
South Florida beats Memphis
BYU over Arizona
Fresno St. over Colorado St.
Navy over Wake Forest

I make this picks to keep myself interested in those December bowl games. If you would like to comment/dispute/offer your own picks, please do so by leaving a comment on the blog (not during class time). Let's see how I do.

Interims AKA Huge Freakout Over Nothing

Interims will be issued Friday. There are two assessments factored into your interim grade: The 2nd Unit II Test and the Chapter 11 Quiz. That's it. Some students will not be happy with a D or F on the interim. They will freak out. Their parents will freak out. Everyone is freaking out, because in the moment, that letter grade is the most important thing.

The solution to all the freakouts: Relax. There are numerous grades to be factored in for the remainder of the marking period. Unit III Test, Ch. 11 IT, Ch. 13 IT, Ch. 12 Quiz, Ch. 13 Quiz (maybe), AP Problem Set. Do well on these, grade comes up. Do your homework, grade comes up.

Why am I writing this? Your score on the AP Exam is the most important thing to you, not the letter that gets put on your report card that may or may not be put on the fridge. Trust me, you are well on your way to getting a good score on the AP Exam.

UNRELATED NOTE: If you're in the hallway while class is going on, there is no need to yell. Especially when the person is standing right next to you.

What happens in Stat class...

On a quick evaluation of myself and the activity we did today (Rolling Down the River), I am really impressed with myself and my students. Here's a quick rundown of what an observer would see upon entering my classroom:

SILENCE - small conversations between 2-3 students related to topic
21 kids with a worksheet, calculator, and laptop on their desk
Kids switching from calculator, to sheet, to laptop
Teacher at front of room on laptop typing

The "old school" conclusion that would be made: This teacher is lazy. He's probably checking his e-mail or entering grades.

What's actually happening: Kids are on laptops entering data that they have obtained. This data is unique to each student. The teacher is organizing the data as it comes in to be displayed on the Promethean board, so that students are not only making conclusions and observations about their own or their class data, they are making conclusions about every Stat student's data. Teacher is also blogging about what is happening in his class.

But where's the learning that's taking place? The teacher is not standing in front of the room and lecturing to them?!?!?!?!? Technology is amazing - it keeps me from lecturing to you.

Give yourselves a pat on the back for being producers of your own learning instead of consumers of mine. You guys rock! So do I.

The Hallways

The reason that hallways exist is to provide an avenue for students to get from one classroom to the next. Coincidentally, students recognize each other and say hello in the hallways, maybe pausing briefly to chat. I've observed several occasions where massive amounts of people gather and block the hallway. The reason this is frustrating is that these people are well aware that they are blocking the hallway...if they are not, they should get the hint after 600 people have said excuse me, and several teachers have asked them to move along.

Why must they continue to stand? There is no productive value to standing in a hallway. Most of the students I observe are standing there and saying nothing. So why are you standing there?!?!?!? It seems that in the 4 minutes to get from one class to the next, it has all of the sudden become "uncool" to arrive to class on time. I have no idea why the adolescent brain determines that arrival to class on time is something that detracts from your status in the teenage jungle (I'm thinking of the movie Mean Girls). Has there ever been a time when someone has poked fun at you because you got to class on time?

The business world that I have participated in while I was obtaining a teaching certificate values those that show up on time. In fact, a characteristic of employees that eventually lose their job is chronic lateness. Now comes the argument of, "Well we don't get paid to go to school", to which I respond, "I don't get paid to tell you when you can go to the bathroom or ask you to take your hood off, but it's something I have to do when I'm here." So, while you're here, participating in the school institution, one of your jobs as a student is to show up on time. If you have a great distance to walk, so be it, I can understand that. But if you're late because you're posted up, think about the impression you are making and the persona you are building by being the "late guy".

TOTALLY UNRELATED NOTE
Unit II Test performance was similar to that of last year. There will be three quizzes, three IT's, and one Unit Test in Unit III. We will also see our first problem set over winter break(happy holidays) . It is a very manageable unit, if you understand the rules of randomness, sampling, bias, and experimental design.