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Friday, February 5, 2016

Important Snow Day Update! Read This!

First off, enjoy your snow day! I'm about to head out for a little snow adventure with my dog and I'm pumped!

After you have some fun outside, it might be a good idea to have a productive day (and Saturday) so you can enjoy Super Bowl Sunday and have a ton of homework Monday night...because we lost today's class, we will have to finish chapter 13 (experiments and observational studies) in 3.5 days! This means you will have an extended set of "reading questions" for homework Monday night. You will be responsible for teaching yourself much of the vocabulary by reading your textbook (and using any other resources you like). You may have an open-note quiz to start class on Tuesday (based on these reading questions). We will use our 3.5ish (minus quiz time) days in class to address any questions you have, and to review some of the "trickier" concepts with experimental design. Experimental design will absolutely be on your Feb. break take home exam, and we will have our (methods of data collection) unit vocabulary test the Thursday after we return from break.

Anyway, back to the more immediate future....

You have two homework responsibilities this weekend (one due Monday, one Tuesday):

1.) Complete your two bias AP problems, then use the rubrics in the post below to score each. Remember, this homework counts double. (See yesterday's blog post for more on this assignment).

2.) Complete the "ch. 13 reading questions" below for Tuesday. I'd strongly recommend getting a head start--get at least half of it done, so you don't have to do it all Monday! You may have an open-note quiz to start class on Tuesday (based on these reading questions). Remember, you are trying to teach yourself this content. Your responses to these questions serve as your primary notes for the chapter (I would answer them in your notebook with the rest of your notes!). The more effort/time you put into reading/responding to the questions, the better you'll understand experimental design for your test and the AP exam! So don't just look for the answers to these questions, read the whole chapter! Oh, and if you have these reading questions entirely done for Monday, you'll get a few points added to (your score on) that free response problem we completed in groups. And 3 stamps (extra credit!)


Chapter 13 Challenge: Teaching Yourself Experiments and Observational Studies
Part I: Read the chapter and complete each of the questions below. Remember, this is for your benefit; the more thorough your notes/responses are, the better prepared we will be! 
·        These questions serve as an outline to help guide your reading. Of course you can take additional notes to strengthen your understanding!


1.      There are two types of observational studies—retrospective and prospective studies.
a.      What is a retrospective observational study?
b.      What is a prospective observational study?
c.      What is matching in an observational study? (page 305).
2.      In an experiment where does the random assignment occur?
3.      What is/are the factor(s), levels, and treatment(s) in an experiment?
4.      What is the response variable?
5.      What distinguishes an experiment from the other methods of data collection? In other words, how is an experiment different than a simulation, sample survey, and observational study?
6.      Describe/comment on each of the four principles of experimental design:
a.      Control:
b.     Randomize:
c.      Replicate:
d.     Block:
7.      What sampling method is equivalent to blocking in an experiment?
8.      *Read through the step-by-step examples in the chapter; these are the examples we would have discussed for our notes in class!
9.      Explain the meaning of “statistically significant.”
10.   What is a control treatment/control group?
11.   What does it mean for an experiment to be single-blind or double-blind?
12.   What is a placebo? Why do we use placebos?
13.   What does it mean for two variables to be confounded?
14.   In your own words summarize the procedure for the tomato/fertilizer experiment on page 298 -300.
**Note the vocabulary list on page 310-312. This list shows the words that you are responsible to know for our chapter 13 vocab!




1 comment:

Anonymous said...

With all this extra time from the snow days, I may have read every post from every year on this blog... Why? Because I guess I have no life besides stats.