Important Concepts for Teachers and Parents

Flipping a Statistics Class Worked Well

Determining Who Passes a Standardized Test

Is My Poor Memory a Learning Disability?

Suggested Education Axioms and Postulates

The Perils of Teaching the Tough Stuff

Academics vs. Educators

Important Concepts for Teachers and Parents

1. Much of behavior is learned.

2. Students respond well to adult disappointment.

3. Studies suggest personality is set by grade one.

4. Most physical and behavioral characteristics follow

a normal distribution with most in the data

in the middle and few outcomes at the extremes.

Extremes deserve special attention.

5. Increased activity often generates less value per unit.

For some people value per unit does not decrease.

They can not get enough TV, socializing, reading, studying,

video games, religion, drinking, gambling ...but

"It does not matter how slowly you

go as long as you can and don't stop." Confucius

Determining Who Passes

a Standardized Education Test 1Kevin J. Clancy, chair and CEO of Copernicus, a global marketing consulting research firm "...developed a statistical model to predict MCAS (Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System) scores..." at different schools based on these socioeconomic characteristics “ ... percentage of families that receive aid to dependent children; have two parents; are below the poverty line; are white; and hold a college bachelor’s degree or higher. What we learned is that how well children perform on MCAS scores has almost everything to do with parental socioeconomic backgrounds and less to do with teachers, curricula, or what children learned in the classroom.” 1 Making more sense of MCAS scores , by Kevin J. Clancy , Boston Globe, April 24, 2000, page A19 This is old but have not seen data to the contrary.

Please

Flipping a Statistics Class Worked Well in early 2000's

Teaching Statistics to Open Evening College Students by Walter

Introduction : After years of traditional teaching to open enrollment college and junior college students, I switched to my now free then inexpensive programmed textbooks Quick Notes Statistics and Excel Statistics Lab Manual. With all the problems and their data sets written in Excel, many of the calculation-learning obstacles were removed. Many students were familiar with the text, as they had used other books from the Quick Notes series.

Quick books are concise one and two-page outlines per chapter followed by practice problems and complete solutions.

Methodology : Class 1 began with a 30-minute overview of material covered on the first test. It was on a o be take-home or used in our computer lab. We then adjourned to the lab with some of the better students leaving to study the lectures on their own and do required work at their leisure while the others joined me in the Excel lab to calculate measures of central tendency. Lectures for a few nights were very short previews. Labs sessions with me and a few students helping with procedures took up most of the class. The class before the computerized test using Excel I conducted a comprehensive 30-minute review at which I again saw the better students and after the review, a few students were off to the lab to finish their computerized lab set due before the test. Tests for probability, hypothesis testing and correlation/regression followed the same procedures.

Result: 1) Being an honor system take-home or in lab computer exam resulted in the same grade distribution as for a traditional in class test where students did calculations. A large note card/cheat sheet was allowed.

2) Using computers, more material was easily covered with less work and anxiety.

3) Only the better students learned more, much more.

Students for open enrollment college classes had for 35 years divided into four groups.

Group one learned central tendency but got lost on probability. They completed the course requirements but never really learned much. They passed with low grades because of my easy grading procedures.

Group two calculated some probability functions. Hypothesis testing was poor as they ran into trouble deciding which Excel menu procedure to use for each of the eight different problems on the take home/lab exam. I had warned them that over 35 years grades always went down with each tests but many were still disappointed. Some of these adults worked really hard but having to choose between finite and normal distributions, large and small samples and then between one sample and two samples eventually led to mistakes.

Group three often got the statistic correct but then had difficulty determining to accept or reject the no change null hypothesis. All the studying in the world does not help because

Group four had one final hurdle to explain what the answer meant. They had correctly accepted or rejected the null hypothesis but what did it mean? They needed to write in the analysis section that the new procedure was faster or had less defects or that the new diet was better/worse or else it was back to group three and a B grade. Less than six from a class of twenty-five got almost everything correct, They got 4 points on almost every problem. A very few indeed got everything correct. I used this system for about six classes before retiring in 2002. All had the same result.

Base on this experience, I believe the computer will help the better students more than the average students. What computers do for average students has been limited but using computers to assist teachers managing an Individualized Curriculum approach to education is promising. T hey had never really understood what hypothesis testing was all about.

2. Classroom Technology Holds Students Back

"...there’s little evidence they help children

especially those who most need help"

by Natalie Wexler Dec 19, 2019

"Educators love digital devices, but there’s little evidence they help children—especially those who most need help."

"A flipped college math class resulted in short-term gains for white students, male students, and those who were already strong in math. Others saw no benefit, with the result that performance gaps became wider."

"College students who used laptops or digital devices in their classes did worse on exams. Eighth graders who took Algebra I online did much worse than those who took the course in person."

Editor: Same result after 20 years. All the money and time in the world will not change the fact that "intelligence is normally distribution."

Is My Poor Memory a Learning Disability?

I found elementary school academically difficult. Good grades in arithmetic, average grades in science and history, and poor grades in reading, spelling, and language. Reading aloud was my biggest worry and spelling a close second. I could not pronounce many of the words when reading to my fourth grade group and hated the awkward seconds it took for a group member to help. As for spelling, forget it. I always missed the first word and sat down. I wonder if just sitting while the game continued affected me. Thankfully, my 4th grade national reading comprehension scores were about two years above grade so I realized I might have been dumb, (as in verbally challenged), but I wasn't stupid.

A few years ago while trying to remember who sang the 1960's song "Down Town" I thought about the picture of the singer on my record album that I had played many times and Patella Clarks name popped into my head. I tried thinking of a picture when trying to remember another name and again it worked. Retired in my late fifties I had discovered a memory trick.

Memory had made my early school life difficult. Could memory training have helped? Hard work and a liking for history had gotten me B's and C's while my competition did little work and earned better grades. Hard work did not help in French 1. I had no chance. If there was any way to get a C grade and take French 2 and sit next to Patricia, the most beautiful girl in the world, I would have found a way. However, it was not to be!

The Perils of Teaching

the Tough Stuff

Teaching mathematics is arguably the most difficult task faced by teachers. Teaching me English was extremely difficult. The following incidents happened to me while teaching an adult evening statistics class. I was stressing the importance of drawing and then labeling a normal curve to determine the seventh decile when a primeval scream "I CAN'T DO IT' shattered the classroom. I calmed the student down but he was right. The circuits were not there. This was not his fault.

For another student understood that 4x = 16 means if four x's add to 16, x = 4. Some students then cannot determine t

While working with a class to work the kinks out of Test-Prep Mathematics

a student complained that I was trying to trick him. I had accidently put a change a fraction to a percentage problem in the change a fraction to a decimal section of a problem set. I said I was sorry, that it was a mistake and then asked what is the answer? What is 1/4 as a percentage? He said I will have to work it out. I said just look at it and guess the answer. He said let me do it. He had not learned enough about mathematics in 12 plus years of school and even given my great free book Test-Prep Mathematics he still didn't intuitively know that 25% is one-quarter!

he value of x when 5x =25. About 25% just cannot do it.

An important town official dropped my evening college accounting class because he just could not do debits and credit. He took it the next term from a teacher that did not teach debits and credits in our introductory accounting class. I taught said accounting class for forty plus years and did not learn the second teacher was correct. Debits and credits were not appropriate for a class of open enrollment business students. Some cannot do it. My class was a waste of a student's time. This is similar to Algebra for average student.

Will Stagnate Median Income Hurt Our Children?