There is no such thing as a free lunch

Reading Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" and "The Tipping Point" has completely changed my way of thinking.  I've begun to analyze everything going on around me in the context of economic/risk theory.  My latest kick has been recognizing the idea of trade-off and risk free profit, most specifically in the field of education.

For some background, you need to be aware that there is no such thing as a risk-free profit.  In order to earn money or make some type of gain (capital or not), you must assume the risk that is associated with that gain.  Big gains often carry the greatest risk, while small gains do not carry such a large risk.  There are ZERO situations that involve a huge gain with no risk or payoff, and it should be obvious as to why.

With that being said, we tend to ask for things of the utmost quality at no cost to us...
1.  Taxpayers want their elected officials (yes, elected, by them) to be at their beck and call, but don't want to pay taxes. 
2.  Taxpayers want the most exceptional high quality education that can be provided for their children for the same price forever
3.  Teachers want to do great things in the classroom, but may not want to put in the incredible amont of time required to develop a good lesson (also could be the case that they spend their time grading, rather than creating).
4.  Students want an A for just showing up and doing what they're told, without spending the incredible amount of time it takes to actually learn something.
5.  Everybody wants their medical bills paid for via health insurance, but they don't want to pay an increased cost for it. 

So, the health insurance debate snuck in here and is a pretty interesting risk scenario.  On one hand, you can opt to not have health insurance and pay your own medical bills at the risk of paying an increasingly high amount.  On the other hand, you can opt for health insurance, at the risk of paying higher premiums.  And yes, I do realize that insurance companies can deny coverage, so we don't really "opt" to not have health insurance.  Just consider that an insurance company does the same risk management evaluation when they evaluate you for health insurance.

Hoping I can get some student commentary, examples, feedback about risk free profit,
-Mr. C

Vindication!

Before reading this blog, read the article linked below...

Quakertown's Standards Based Grading

So I finally am vindicated. I always talk about how unimportant grades are, and that the important thing is that you actually learn something. In my class, you are learning something with the goal of doing well on the AP Statistics exam.

Quakertown has decided that they are only going to grade the fact that students are learning something. Students are rated on what they are expected to learn on a scale of 1-4. If you know it extensively, you get a 4. If you know it well enough to complete elementary tasks, you get a 3. They have effectively made a student's grade based solely upon what they know. Not because they show up to class and don't fall asleep. Not because they are a nice kid. Not even because they do homework. The fluff in grading that we all know exists but none of us talk about, has been eliminated.

Big surprise that parents and students don't like it. "It's too hard sometimes to get an A." That's how it's supposed to be. The article then goes on to further support my claim that colleges don't really care about grades. I had to grin the entire time I was reading this article. Students don't like this form of grading because it increases accountability. If you want to earn a 4 for that particular standard, guess what, you have to do everything you need to do to learn the material.

In closing, how to I apply this idea to AP Statistics? I really like the idea of students being able to take a retest. An unsuccessful first attempt, and then you go back to the drawing board to relearn it and improve, then take the test again. It forces those that need more work to do more work. Those that don't need more work are able to move on.

I also have a list of all learning objectives for AP Stat. How'd you like to look at home access center and see 10,000 standards and your skill level in each one of them? You'd know exactly what you need to get better at. You'd know exactly what you've mastered.

The wheels are in motion here...

DISCLAIMER: I am in no way saying that North Penn should move in this direction. This blog was simply my musings on a way to adapt this idea of standards based grading to my AP Stat classroom. This article simply inspired me to consider a way to improve my classroom practice.

Free Burrito!!

Friday was a reasonably eventful day for me. I had our amazing tech assistants work on speeding up my laptop, I was using a document camera to get an English project in electronic form, filming a ball being dropped for a Calculus lesson, etc. Oh, there's some teacher duties thrown in there too. Working on these mini-projects resulted in me missing my lunch, and I continued to excuse it throughout the day by saying, "It's cool. Chipotle is on the way home so I'll grab a late lunch there." As it turns out, this was the greatest idea I have ever had.

I got out of the building around 2:50pm, by that point I was starving. Chipotle has never sounded so good. I get into Chipotle and order my chicken fajita burrito(I never order anything else), and as soon as I order the girl behind the counter says, "Free burrito!". Apparently Chipotle does a promotion where they randomly place stickers on the foils they wrap the burritos in, and whoever gets one of the stickers gets their burrito for free. They should call this promotion, "Make Mr. C's day the greatest day ever". This promotion usually results in giving 6 free burritos away per day.

So, as my burrito nears completion, the amazing Chipotle employees were talking about the free burrito promotion. Out walks the manager and explains to the other customers that had to pay for their burritos (ha!) this free burrito phenomenon. He then proceeds to say, "See, the more you come in, the better your chances are for a free burrito."

Well, wasn't he the lucky one to be giving the free burrito to the Stat teacher. I had to sit him down and explain that the probability of receiving the free burrito is the same regardless of the number of times I visit. For this valuable information, I'm pretty sure he was happy I got the free burrito.

Did I mention that I got a free burrito? And that's why Friday January 15, 2010 was one of the greatest days ever.

College Football Bowl Picks '09

Everyone knows I'm a fan of college football. Last year I did this, and I did absolutely horrible. Let's try again. I can't possibly do worse. For some matchups, I'll even call the score.

Wyoming over Fresno St
Rutgers over UCF
Middle Tennesee over Southern Miss
Oregon State over BYU
Utah over California

Nevada over SMU
Ohio over Marshall
Pitt over UNC
USC over Boston College
Clemson over Kentucky

Texas A&M over Georgia
UCLA over Temple
Wisconsin beats Miami
Bowling Green beats Idaho
Nebraska over Arizona

Air Force beats Houston
Oklahoma beats Stanford
Mizzou over Navy
Minnesota over Iowa State
Tennessee beats Virginia Tech

Auburn beats Northwestern
Penn State over LSU (Close one, but give it to PSU)
Florida State over West Virginia (You can't go against Bobby Bowden coaching his last game ever)
South Florida beats Northern Illinois
UConn beats South Carolina

Ole Miss beats Oklahoma St
East Carolina over Arkansas
Texas Tech beats Michigan St
Central Mich. over Troy

The BCS games
Ohio State 30 Oregon 20 (has Oregon played any teams that play defense?)
Florida 31 Cincinatti 10 (Cincinatti gets played off the field after their coach leaves for ND)
TCU 28 Boise St 3 (Boise St has been a pretender all year. Both of these teams can afford to play 4 bad games a year and still go undefeated.)
Iowa 17 Georgia Tech 13 (I like Kirk Ferentz with time to get ready for Tech's triple option)
Alabama 31 Texas 14 (Texas will score 2 late touchdowns)

So there you have it. I missed 10 out of 34.

The Lost Art of Copying Stuff Down

Take notes! Take notes! Take notes!

Such was the method of learning when I was in school, as the teacher knew it all, and the student was there to....take notes. It was a skill that carried over to other areas of life, I took a message on the phone by writing it/copying it down. If something was important, I wrote it down.

When is the last time you(as a student) needed to copy something down outside of school. What I mean is, when you organize information for writing a paper on it, how do you do it? Do you copy those notes down, then open up a word document to write it? I can speak from personal experience in writing papers for graduate school, any information that I gather gets copied and pasted or typed directly into a Word document. The sweet part is that it's there forever (until I delete it). No need to manage a bunch of spare pieces of paper or a notebook. It's actually much more efficient to keep an electronic version.

Where am I going with this? Oh yeah...in school, your main task is usually to "copy these notes down!!!!". Is there any wonder that your skill level at it is incredibly low? No offense, you just weren't brought up to keep your information via pen and paper. As a matter of fact, it is a skill you will rarely need. Yeah, I said it.

"But what about at college, don't you have to take notes in class?" No. Why not spend your time paying attention in class instead of writing things down? If you have never learned by writing down what someone else was writing, it won't all of the sudden start to happen because you're in a univesity setting.

The alternative and better means of note-taking: pay attention in class and maybe jot down a question or two that you might have (then ask it). Go home, Google whatever you were talking about that day and you will likely find a course page, someone's notes, or a tutorial on that topic. Read through all of those and synthesize all of the information you've received. No paper, no notebooks, just your brain. Yes, you're going to find a ton of information, and it's going to be exactly the same as what you are being instructed on. Statistics is still Statistics whether it comes from someone at North Penn High School or San Diego.

Welcome...and some Reading Quiz Feedback

First of all, welcome to the class and welcome to AP Stat, and I hope all is going well in your first days of school. I see by some of the Reading Quiz responses, that many of you will enjoy Penn State references throughout the year. I suppose I can allow 1, maybe 2 per month. Lucy(my dog) is able to remain impartial (my wife attended PSU).

Second of all, I want to use this blog as another form of communication with you, instead of getting on a tangent/rant/off-topic debate during class. The first thing I hope to communicate to you is some feedback about the Chapter 1 & 2 Reading Quiz. Good news is that I only have a few comments about it, you did pretty well.

On the reading quiz, several students showed a bit of uncertainty about mainly the Who and the What. Not many other errors were made in the understanding of the rest. Good thing is, When, Where, Why, How are important, but not the major players that Who and What are. So, for some emphasis, the Who is the population or group that you are studying or collecting information from, they generate the data. There has been confusion in the past with students mistaking the Who for the people who conduct the survey. The What is the variables that were measured, and they may be either categorical or quantitative. It is often helpful to consider the units. So, to identify the what, look at the data that was collected and determine what variable was represented.

In closing, great job on the reading quiz, keep reading the book! Take it easy. See ya in 12 hours!

-Mr. C

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