Statistics
If no mistake you have made, losing you are. A different game you should play..
Jedi Master Yoda
Welcome!
Statistics is about collecting, describing, representing, analyzing, and drawing conclusions from data. If we lived in a world where all measurements were identical for every individual, these tasks would be simple. For example, consider the population of all Park Students. Suppose every student takes the same amount of time to get ready to come to school in the morning, participates in the same number of after school activities, and has the same grade point average. It would not matter how many students were studied or how they were selected. In fact, we could talk to just a single student and know how long any student took to get ready in the morning, how many after school activities they were involved with, and what their GPA was. In life, this situation is extremely rare.
We will be learning how to responsibly work with data. This class is less about the calculation of numeric answers than the understanding of what those numeric answers mean in context and understanding why we are calculating them.
Participation
Daily participation is expected from all students. This includes bringing your supplies (pencils, notebook(s), and workbooks), taking notes, and following the class expectations and policies. If you forget your supplies, you may borrow them from a classmate. We also expect students to ask questions when they have them and provide positive feedback to their classmates as appropriate. Math is about jumping in, getting messy, trying possibilities out, learning from mistakes, and being engaged with the subject.
Academic Dishonesty
Any action or attempted action that may result in creating an unfair academic advantage for oneself or an unfair advantage or disadvantage for any other member of the academic community will not be tolerated.
(http://sa.berkeley.edu/conduct/integrity/definition/)
Communicating Mathematically
One often-neglected piece of mathematics is communicating your results. During the course you will be given multiple opportunities to practice communicating mathematically, both in writing and orally. We believe the ability to communicate mathematically is as important a skill as being able to do the mathematics itself.
My Beliefs
I believe everyone can, and should, learn mathematics. I feel mathematics is more about the thought processes and reasoning, which occurs while solving problems rather than just getting the right answers. Math is also about thinking about what the answer represents and expressing that answer as a solution to real world problems, especially in Statistics. I believe that the best reason to study math is to learn and refine logical thinking, productive problems solving and persistence in the face of challenges.
Standards for Mathematical Practice
- Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them
- Reason abstractly and quantitatively
- Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others
- Model with mathematics
- Use appropriate tools strategically
- Attend to precision
- Look for and make use of structure
- Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning