December 18 and 19, Is a distribution normal or not, Grouped data

So 6 more days till CHRISTMAS!!!! YEAH I hope everyone is getting excited I know I am!! And something even better!!! 2nd last day of school!! And here's hoping tomorrow is a snow day!! Than even an extra long holiday!! It'd be so nice!






So for today i see that Mr. Mak's is putting on the head phones!! Ssssoo that means we are recording today!

OK so there is noone that is supposed to blog today so i will just tell you what we did for the last day before CHRISTMAS holidays!! So we just got done all our A.M math objectives and we finished up the multiple choice in our standard deviation booklets! If you guys missed out on today with out a good reason you will be receiving a zero on both assignments!

Have a GREAT holiday and see you guys after in the new year!! YEAH here comes 2009!!!

Dec 17- Work day

Today we just did work. We found out that the test is put off till we get back from the holiday's.

Monday, December 16

Today Mr.Max was away so we had a sub. The work assigned from the sub was so have all of the Normal Distribution Questions complete for tomorrow's class ( including the multiple choice questions).

**Also a reminder that the 13 A.M. Objectives are due before we leave for christmas holidays**

Friday December 12, 2008- Z-Scores

Good afternoon everyone!!!


Today we started off the class with our 43rd Mental Math. I would like to take this time to thank "chevy" for blogging yesterday. We need more people to step up like this. Anyways, a homework check followed M.M. on Question #2 from the Statistics Review booklet.


Mr. Maksymchuk corrected the question in the following slides showing how to figure out the test mark that the board should use as the cut for identifying gifted students.

The green under the graph represents the 48,000 students that will be tested. There is a 1% chance that if selected randomly from the 48,000 students, they will be gifted. (480 in total)


Using the "invnorm" technique, you can figure out the test score.


Type the following into your calculator:

invnorm (.99, 100, 15); and you will receive an answer of 134.9.

This answer means that 134.9 is the test score that will indicate the 480 gifted students.

Using the ronblond.com website and using the normal distribution program will also help you answer this question.



Next we moved onto a lesson on "z-scores."




We also did an example to involving "z-scores."



Homework for this weekend: Questions #8, and you can work on the rest of the multiple choice pertaining to z-scores, but they aren't necessarily for homework.

Mr. Maksymchuk recorded himself during this lesson on "z-scores". Listen to hear a full recording of the lesson on this topic.

Have an awesome weekend everyone!!

Thursday, December 11th

To start today's class off, we did a brief homework check on the three questions that were assigned to us yesterday.

If you haven't read Mr. Maks' post that he published yesterday, than i recommend you do so. The things he said, encouraged me to contribute to our class today and blog. Also, I want to take this time to say thanks to Huckelberry for stepping up and blogging yesterday, even though you didn't want to, you still ( being the great person that you are:) ) did it.

Anyway, to carry on... We than corrected the three questions from yesterday.

FOR Homework: question number 2 and all the multiple choice ones.
--- for the remainder of the class he gave us the option of working on these questions, our essay, or our accelerated math

It Takes All Kinds...

In my opinion, one of the most worthwhile things that students can learn while in the public education system is that the world is full of different sorts of folks. Everyone comes at each situation with different sets of priorities and all of the other pieces that define us as people and as a society. I think Huckleberry hit on something really interesting and important in the post below this one, if you take the time to read the first sentence...


Why did she think that it was important enough to scribe yesterday, even though obviously she (and others) felt that it maybe should have 'been someone else's turn'?

Was that fair?

Will most of the rest of your lives be 'fair'?

I personally feel that her classmates are extremely lucky to have a classmate like Huckleberry, but it bothers me a little that I'm talking about her contribution like it's the exception to the rule, rather than the norm...

Should I lower my expectations about students? ....how about doing the right thing just because it is the right thing? Is it ever OK to just sit back and wait while someone else does what maybe you should have done? In the 'real world', outside classroom walls, I believe that this happens all the time. In the world of work, who do we reward? Who advances up the corporate ladder? Who makes the most money? Who 'wins'? Will you?

One of the worst things, again, in my opinion, that we do in public education is to shelter our students and encourage some silly idea that everyone has the right to this, and the right to that, and the system 'owes' me because 'I'm special' and 'I'm unique'....(which I won't actually dispute at all, because in a very real sense, I do believe in the power of the individual to bring about greater good among the many, but that's another post.)...However, rarely do we discuss the responsibility to ourselves, to others, and to society in general that we as individuals have to somehow be proactive in our approach to make the world even slightly better than we found it. If everyone asked a question like "What can I do to help?", and contributed just a bit, instead of feeling like "What do I get out of it?", wouldn't the world be just a bit better on a regular basis? Of course it would, but how do we encourage that kind of shift in thinking, because currently, it can certainly be argued that things are going a different direction...

At risk of trying to sound like JFK, or Gandhi, or Garrett Hardin, or John Lennon (who were all great people, in my opinion), I'd prefer to leave this post with a couple of my favourite quotes. The first is actually probably my all-time favourite, by a respected American anthropologist, Margaret Mead, who said,


"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

For the record, you guys (and every class that I've ever taught), are that group.

The other quote that I like a lot (and probably have thrown out in class), comes from 'Uncle Ben', as advice to young Peter Parker in the Marvel comic series, Spider Man.

He says, "With great power comes great responsibility."
I know it's from a comic, and I know some people think it's corny, but so is my sense of humour..... I'll leave this last question....What is your power? Will you use it wisely and responsibly? I hope so...and I believe in you.



Anyone have a comment? I dare you...


Cheers, and I wish you all peace for the holiday season....










RM



photo credits: via Flickr.com 1. http://www.flickr.com/photos/liz/205980480/
2. http://www.flickr.com/photos/48006461@N00/2357873315/

Wed. blog, December 10

I think it was kinda sad no one stepped up to blog today... but anyways here I am. No mental math today, he gave us ten min. to finish our homework. The chicken moisture question. number one on our booklet. No one is understanding this unit ... I think we all need to calm down and try harder or something. I don't know. ...Inner peace every one, Inner peace. haha

We learned many different ways such as the Stats spread sheet on Excel, we can retrieve it on the math coursework drive, or the normalpdf graphing way on the calculator, or the normalcdf witch is probably the easiest way in my opinion or the Ron Blond way. The practice questions in the statistics review #7, #12, #15 for homework.

Dec 9th 2008 Standard Deviation

Today is a wonderful day. The sun is shining and nonmigratory birds are singing. We started off our beautiful math class with good ol' mental math. The questions were concerning our current unit, standard deviation. The fact of the matter is that I honestly don't understand concept of this unit. I was away yesterday due to poor health. Apparently it was a good class to miss.



The subject of today's class was based on normal distributions. We did an example pertaining to men's height in the city of Hong Kong. We learned how to use our calculaters to determine standard deviation. Mr. MAKS-SYM-CHUK showed us a good website to figure out normal distribution.


http://www.ronblond.com/M12/norm.APPLET/index.html

The homework for tommorrow is the chicken moisture question. Be sure to have a solution ready for tommorrow's class.

lew
*images were corrupt

December 8, 2008- Standard Deviation, Normal Distribution

Today is Monday, December 8, 2008!! Today is also an open scribe day, so I will be contributing with todays work and activitites!! YAY!

Today, we started off a brand new page of mental math and continued some work with Statistics.

Mr. Maksymchuk started this lesson by asking us we think "standard deviation" means. Standard Deviation is a relative measure (to the data set) of how spread out the data set is. If the population standard deviation is really large, the data sat in very spread out. However, if it is really small (close to zero) then the data set is very clustered around the mean.

Next, we did an activity using our calculators involving "Normal Distribution." Also, refer to the following websites on the slide and see more on this topic.

Normal Distribution is based on a histogram with these labels.

Before we could conclude this lesson, we ran out of time. Tomorrow the scribe is Brydget. Have a great day everyone!!

Dec 4/08

Today we did Mental Math and then did notes for Variability and Statistical Analysis.

Greek alphabet

Today in math Mr. Maks showed us some Greek letters. I was interested in finding them all and it seems others were curious to, so I googled "Greek Alphabet" and came up with a table showing them all, including symbols, pronounciation, and transalation to english letters.

Dec.03/08 Sequence questions 8 and 10

There is 12 school days till Christmas break starts...


Today, we started of class with mental math as usually.


Next,we went over number 8 the drug question,and number 10.


Number 8:

For a particular infection, an antibiotic medication is given in the form of a 500 mg pill. One pill is taken at 8:00 a.m. each morning. By the next day, at 8:00 a.m., 25% of the antibiotic medication has been released from the body.


a) calculate the amount of medication in the body at 8:00 a.m. each day for six days.

b) The same antiobotic is also used to fight a different infection. Suggest a way to take only 6 pills to achieve a level of a least 1000 mg daily in the body for more than 5 days. Pills can only be taken at 8 :00 a.m.Partical pills can be taken.


That is the answer for question 8.

Question 10:

That is the answer for question 10.

REMEMBER TO VOTE!!

December 2nd, 2008(the last month of 2008 forever....)

Hello everyone. Today is Tuesday and like usual we are starting out with the ever so great mental math. There was a funny with mental math today. The first question was:

"In this network diagram, how many NODES?"

The big purple dots show where the nodes are. Nodes happen when things meet because they are a connection point. It was funny becase alot of people, including myself did not understand until Mr.Max labeled each dot.

Anywho, we will now move on to the correction of question 14 in the Sequences Review Questions booklet. Mr. Max pretty much stated this question as ridiculous..HAHA!! he said ever ridiculous at the exact same time as i typed it..weird :s. I really did not understand this question so I won't be explaining it, but I will put the screen shots of it on here for your use.

Dun Dun Dun..Homework!!

Tonight we have to do questions 8 and 10 out of the Sequences Review Questions booklet. Practice Practice Practice...there is quiz tomarrow and it may or may not be for marks.

Have a fantastical Tuesday night..and dont forgot about 90210!!

Ps: Everyone vote for which unit you would like between applications of periodic functions and stats.

Christmas is near!

This blog is meant for Monday, December the 1st. Christmas is near! Woo- hoo!! Today we did mental math and corrected the questions that were for homework last Thursday. The following are the answers to the questions 3, 4 & 15 on the sequences review booklets.

#3. A wedding cake has square layers that are 3 inches tall. Each layer's side length is half as long as the length of the layer below it. If each side of the base layer is 12 inches long, use sequences to calculate the volume of a cake with 4 layers.

#4. A study revealed that in January 2001, 5000 people in town used the internet. Each year, this number is influenced by the following: the number of internet users is increased by 2.5% and 100 people cancel their internet service.
Determine the number of people that will use the internet in this town by January 2006. Show how you arrived at your answer.

#15. On a murky island there is bear population of 400. Each year, 12% of the bear population dies. Each spring an average of 56 bear cubs are born.
a) Determine the bear population each year over the next 5 years. Show your work.
b) What will the bear population be after it stabilizes?
c) Construct a population graph of the sequence extending the x- axis to include the first 50 years. Label the graph.
d) Devise a plan to stabilize the bear population between 400 to 450 bears (inclusive) by the 50th year.
For the answer to this question Mr. Maks showed us the website that generates an answer for you.
Go to this link for similar questions. http://www.shodor.org/interactivate/activities/Sequencer/?version=1.6.0_03&browser=MSIE&vendor=Sun_Microsystems_Inc..