Man it's been a while

Hey, there's been an issue with Websense at school, so the blog has been very quiet as of late. Hopefully that changes, as I have some ideas leading up to the AP Exam.

First and foremost, hope everyone enjoyed Spring Break. It has been a very welcome break from a school year in which we have all worked incredibly hard. You deserve it, now let's get ready for that final sprint towards the AP Exam.

Second of all, AP Exam is coming up! Hopefully some of you have been opening a review book and taking care of some exam preparation. Pay attention to Experimental Design and Linear Regression.

My estimation of where we stand as far as the AP Exam is that you have become quite capable learners over the course of the year. A few months in, I'm sure there were a lot of you saying "Everyone told me this class was easy. They all lied to me!". Now, I have seen the majority of my students become productive, independent learners. The goal of my classroom is to do much higher level activities than go over HW problems. I have seen you respond very well to that philosophy, and it has definitely shown in the quality of work you have put forth. I've seen great improvements in not only Stat knowledge, but attitude toward learning and school. Work needs to be done for understanding, not just because it's going to be checked. This is an attitude and skill that is going to serve you very well in college, and I'm proud of those students that display this attitude. Keep it up!

I feel as if everyone of my students has an incredibly legitimate chance of achieving a 3, and in many cases 4's and 5's. One final challenge I will put in front of you is to outperform last year's students. Here's the breakdown (out of the 60 students whose exam scores I have):

5 - 20%
4 - 43%
3 - 27%
2 - 8%
1 - 2%

To transfer this to the 105 students taking the exam this year, that means 21 5's, 45.15 4's, 28.35 3's, 8.4 2's, and 2.1 1's. Why don't we make it our goal to take the 10.5 students that should score below a 3, and spread them out among the 3's, 4's, and 5's? And I'm still working on figuring out how to get 15 hundreths of a student...I guess 15% of your test has to be a 4, 35% a 3, 40% a 2, and 10% a 1. I'll be accepting one student volunteer to have their test be this way, so that the numbers come out the way they are supposed to, nice and even.

See you tomorrow!

-Mr. C