Student Voices Podcast Episode 1: Jessie

I was talking to Jessie earlier this week while helping her review over the lunch hour. I found her comments so compelling I asked her (and later her parents) if I could record and publish her comments so other students could hear what she had to say. I've long thought students need to hear from other students how they best learn to help them all learn.

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of podcasts called Student Voices. I'm hoping to have one of these short conversations with a student published each week. If you'd like to volunteer to be featured in one of these just let me know.

In this episode Jessie shares how she uses her class blog to learn and describes her personal "tipping point" from being confused to understanding Statistics very well. She also discusses the value of learning conversations and how sometimes being a "teacher" and sometimes a student helps her learn.

Please feel free to leave Jessie your comments here on this post.

(Download File 5.6Mb, 11 min. 40 sec.)

Photo Credit: Kids of conversation by flickr user Kris Hoet

SO Statistics is the hardest unit, and I'm sure everyone agrees with me. I know how to do the work, its remembering how I did it that [gives me a hard time]. I haven't had much time to go on the computer to check posts, so I just download the homework, and print it. I guess what really got to my head is i expect what i recently learned to be on the pretest, so I totally forget what the earlier work we did. That would be shade norm function, and all the little problems that come with it. Like for instance, find 5 deviations to the left or right, adding and subtracting the deviation to the mean, and all that jazz. Hopefully I'll do alright and leave my first answer on the paper and don't second guess myself.

BOB

well this was a pretty hard unit, and i know many of you agree. I for one had many weak areas that I need to improve upon. I know that i can't stop studying, i hope i do good on the test. The concepts of knowing when the right time to use normalcdf, normalpdf, binomcdf, and binompdf is starting to become a bit clearly but still I may need to further my knowledge.

good luck to everyone tommorow.

B.O.B.

Statistics definitely one of the hardest units that we did so far.. Not too confident at all with it but, trying my best to do it even though I know I'm going to do bad. Doesn't hurt to keep studying right? Haven't had much time to do homework at all but, I actually have been trying during the prep time I have to keep up. I actually think I understand "Confidence Intervals" but, not too much on the others. The problem is just knowing when to use normalpdf, normalcdf, binompdf, or binomcdf is the thing. I'm doing my best to understand these functions though and it seems as though if I wanted to use normalcdf it'd calculate a continuous data and binomcdf which would calculate discrete data meaning no decimals. What "normalcdf" means is "Normal Cumulative Distribution Function" and "binomcdf" means "Binomial Cumulative Distribution Function." An example of one is the lightbulb question in the pre-test. Well I hope this is a good enough B.O.B. and wish everyone Good Luck on the test tommorow and study hard!

BOB

Hey guys this is Alvin. I'm pretty nervous about the unit test, i dont think that im going to do well on it. i actually had a few muddy points, but right now my only concern is the confidence intervals. its still pretty blurry to me, but thanks to the blog, i think ill be alright.
I think that my strongest point is in the shadenorm(), i spent some time with it so it shouldnt give me any hickups.

BOB

...Bob.... for.... Statistics....

This actually was a harder unit than i thought; at first i really didn't know the difference or how to use either normalcdf, or binomcdf. Later on, i learned that using binomcdf, means that the data is discrete (not involving decimals). Ie: you can't have half a person or half a light bulb. On the other hand, normalcfd deals with continous data (including decimals) aergo; questions like eating 1/5 of a sandwich can be done with normalcdf. Although i have some vague ideas on using these functions, i'll still have to review my notes. I also have to get reacquainted with using, InvNorm and ShadeNorm, since i forgot how to use them.... -_-"

In conclusion, study, study, study; i still want that 90%+ mark in this class. Goodluck to everyone.

HI! This is COwMIlk How you guys prepare for the test about statistic tomorrow?? I think the important thing in this chapter is normal distribution .Follow with this is some formula :
+ Shapenorm(Low Value ,Hi value,mean,std.dev) but I think you guys should change to Z-score ^^ because that easier (I think) there's how to use shapenorm: shapenorm(Low Z-score,Hi-Z-score).
+ InvNorm(Percent) this one is easy to use ,when you have the percent ,just use this formula and u will get the Z-score,remember this percent must be from the minimum point at left of the bell Shape to right of the bell Shape .
+ And everyone must know how to calculate Z-SCORE

Binomial Distribution
When binomial distribution approached to the normal distribution (np AND nq >= 5) we can use the formula of normal distribution.
+ binomialPDF(trial,percent,x) :
Ex: flip the coint 20 times
Trial --> we have 20 letters (H or T) --> trial is 20
percent--> 1/2--> trial is 1/2
The calculator will create 20 letters ( H or T)
X(optional of this formula) :if you don't put x , the calculator will show all of your results. (all the percent .If u put x = 5,the calculator only show 1 result ,that is the percent of exactly 5 letters in 20 letters.

+ binomialCDF(trial,percent,x) : the same with formula above, but it's have a LITTLE difference :P . When we put x=5 , the calculator will add all the percent from TTT(all of T)...or (All of H) to 5 letters H in 15 letters T (or 5 letters T in 15 letters H)

That's some things i think importance ...and ...that it ^^ ...GOODLUCK

MR.K when we hand in 4 questions ?????????

BOB

Dear BOB,

I just wanted to let you know that STATISTICS is the hardest unit in Applied Math 40S. So, now I need to study and analyze each problems that we did in class or as for homeworks to do better for the test tomorrow. Mr.K. has done everything he could to help us understand the concept of the following: normalCDF, normalPDF, binomPDF, binomCDF, ShadeNorm, and invNorm. But now it's our turn to apply that to the real world. That's why they called this course APPLIED MATH. Those are the keys we need to remember to be able to answer the test questions. And now I kinda understand what those functions mean. Just good luck to everyone and study and review your notes, problem questions, and quizzes to really help you succeed in the test. GOOD LUCK! Adios Amigos.

Hey everyone its Michelle and this is my BOB. When I found out that we were doing statistics I almost freaked out because I know that this unit would be tricky. At the beginning of the unit I was having problems on determining on when to use binomcdf and normalcdf. I thought that I would never understand it. But after going over it many many times it finally makes sense to me. =) I know that when using binomcdf your using it because the data involved is discrete meaning not having a decimal place. For example you couldn't have half a person. And with normalcdf the data involved is continuous which has decimal places. An example would be your weight or your height and both functions you use are commulitive which is when you add up the numbers as you go along. The one thing that still hasn't made complete sense to me is when to use invNorm. So I will definitely have to look into that tonight so that I can do better on the test tomorrow. Good luck everyone, and hopefully we will all do good on tomorrows test!

Scribe Post for April 8th

Wow this Scribe post is really late. on April 8th we learned how to use the binomcdf function on the calculator while using the binomial distribution and normal approximation.

There is a link between the normal approximation and the binomial distribution and that is if np is greater than or equal to 5 and nq is greater then or equal to 5. We also learned that if the binomial distribution can be approximated by a normal curve then we can calculate the mean and the standard deviation:

mean=np standard deviation=square root of npq.

when we use the binomcdf function we check what the question tells us like if there are a certain amounts of items and the question wants us to find out how much more than another number then we use it but if the question asks us to find the exact amount then we use the binompdf. binomcdf adds up the data because the c stands for cumulative.

thats all I remember in class that day but next time I will make sure that I am ready.

BOB - STATISTICS

ok so this is my BOB for the statistics unit so here i go...
as well all know this unit is a toughy and yes i'll admit it's not my favorite =\ but since i need a good mark on this test i wanna make sure i get through it in 1 piece. Maybe after i read over everything a few times it'll stick but as of right now i feel we've learned so much that it's in my head just floating around all unorganized. one of my most biggest weaknesses is identifying when to use normalc/pdf or binomialc/pdf.. i understand when to use either cdf or pdf but it's the normal or binomial that confuses me now.

ok i'm going to go on studying since................ MR. K. I GOT MY BINDER BACK! =)

Scribe

Sorry for the lateness of this post, this is the scribe for April 14, 2008.

So we talked about using a confidence interval of 95% and a margin error to answer certain questions. Like how certain we can be that the results would be approximately the same if another survey is done, and based on the results you can see what the smallest and largest numbers are. 

to find a 95% interval you have to find N, the mean, and the standard deviation. you first find the margin of error which is when you multiply the magic number 1.96 by whatever the standard deviation is. If you want the percent margin of error you divide the margin of error by N. from that you subtract and add your margin of error to the mean. This finds the smallest and largest numbers you can have, thus the 95% confidence interval. 

If you need any help then the slides from the 14th can help as well.

and michelle is the next scribe, but she has already completed hers.

Hi everyone its me michelle. :) As you all know all that we did today in class was have a pre-test, so as a reminder don't forget to do a BOB! The next scribe is....Alvin

BOB

So I thought I was prepared to write our statistics test this Thursday but after doing the pre-test today, turns out I'm not as ready as I thought because I was blanking out on most of the questions which isn't a good sign. However,what helped me the most in this unit was keeping up with what we did in class by going through all the slides and writing down my own notes to get a better understanding. I don't know but I really liked this unit, I thought it was pretty fun lol yeaa I found this unit a lot easier than the probability unit and I know some or all of you won't agree with me buhh putting the time and effort really helped me a lot. I liked how we learned all the new functions in our calculators and knowing when to to use it and what values we need to plug into them. Being the scribe also helped me learn the difference between using standardized and modified distributions and when to use invNorm. Anyways what I found difficult in this unit was finding the Y-scale when we needed to graph things and when we have to explain things. Like why is binomalcdf and normalcdf's values are relatively close. I know why, it's just that I'm having a hard time to find the right words to explain it. But other than that, I understand everything else, I just have to review all my notes and hopefully I'll do fine on the test.

Today's Slides: April 15

Here they are ...

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Dear BOB,

Considering there's a test very soon... I'm guessing we need to be bob'ing. So here's mine.
Something that I thought was "cool" that I learned in class quite a while ago in this unit was that whole deal about a metre ruler or something. You know.. when Mr. K. asked another teacher to try to explain to us how a 1m ruler is made and such. It was very interesting and complicated.. but nonetheless "cooool" ya digg? So in the end, after that whole complicating, -and cool, explanation of golden rulers and everything, we learned that things are based on a STANDARD. Just like how rulers and measurements are (or should be) the same 'around the world'..

Thank you Mr. K. for taking that extra step to teach us in depth of rulers. xD

Oh and yeah.. I think this was how we were introduced to standard deviations.
I can't remember though.

Today's Slides: April 14

Here are the slides. Answers to the homework is below ...

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April 11, 2008

The next scriber will be *drum rolls* Jessie!
Haha.. if you folks don't know what the picture is, it's a "Lion Dance Drum." If you want to watch a lion dance come on the 85th anniversary of our school!

February 12,2008

Hey guys! I'm very sorry about the late scribe. Just a little bit of misunderstanding happened but it's all good now. Well, here we go. SCRIBE FOR THURSDAY:
First, we did a quiz in the morning to test what we understand about normal and binomial distribution so far and here's the quiz that we did:


So, that was the quiz that we did in the morning and in the afternoon we did a problem about SOLVING THE BINOMIAL PROBLEM AS NORMAL DISTRIBUTION.

When to use:
normalpdf & binomialpdf = when a discrete data can't have a half a number.
normalcdf & binomialpdf = when a continuous data can have half a number

That's all I can do for the scribe for Thursday. Hope this helped some of y'all.
Next scribe will be chosen by DAVID.

Today's Slides: April 11

Here they are ...

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