Every semester that I teach the normal curve I emphasize on its importance to the rest of the class. I even discuss how one can "check" to see if their answer makes sense if they draw the right picture to begin with. So how is it that the following things have happened?
1. The probability of it taking longer than 25 minutes for the allergy medicine to work is 1.24?
2. The probablility of it taking between 15 and 20 minutes is -0.3214?
3. If the mean is 18, how is the 60th percentile 12.5, or better yet, 0.60?
4. Since I am an outlier, the claim is okay?
5. You did better on the second exam because you were CLOSER to the mean (as compared to being HIGHER than the mean).
I guess if I understood how these things happened, I would get a big teaching reward for solving these mistakes :)
Showing posts with label students. Show all posts
Showing posts with label students. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
It will only take 5 or 10 minutes...
I here this phrase from my students a lot. And while 5 or 10 minutes of my day is not a large chunk, let me put things into perspective...
I have about 120-140 students a semester at any given time. If each of these students wanted 5-10 minutes of my time per week, that would be 10-20 hours of my week (for 120 students) or 11.5-23 hours of my week (for 140 students).
So let's see, I am actually teaching in class about 10-12 hours a week, I have about 8 hours of office hours (which few students actually come to), spend about 5-10 hours planning for classes, about 5-10 hours grading for my classes. Oh yeah, and I am supposed to have about 8-12 hours to do scholarship and service (i.e. researchy things and meetings). This by itself adds up to 36 - 52 hours a week. This doesn't count my time for lunch, talking with fellow colleagues about the classes, my blogging :), etc.
Alright, that is my rant of the day :)
I have about 120-140 students a semester at any given time. If each of these students wanted 5-10 minutes of my time per week, that would be 10-20 hours of my week (for 120 students) or 11.5-23 hours of my week (for 140 students).
So let's see, I am actually teaching in class about 10-12 hours a week, I have about 8 hours of office hours (which few students actually come to), spend about 5-10 hours planning for classes, about 5-10 hours grading for my classes. Oh yeah, and I am supposed to have about 8-12 hours to do scholarship and service (i.e. researchy things and meetings). This by itself adds up to 36 - 52 hours a week. This doesn't count my time for lunch, talking with fellow colleagues about the classes, my blogging :), etc.
Alright, that is my rant of the day :)
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