Thursday HW

Please complete:

Page 36 (Chapter 3): 19, 26, 33

**Period B** Notice I removed problem 39.

Wed. HW

Almost done with chapter 3....I cannot wait to start playing around with more numbers! We get a little taste tonight, with your Titanic homework. I've attached the activity under powerpoints and assignments if you lost yours.

Tonight please complete the Titanic/Independence activity. Make sure you do a thorough job. Think. Be creative. Use numbers, graphs, percents...tomorrow we'll base all of our discussion around these responses.

Tomorrow night we'll have some homework specifically about independence; this weekend I will most likely ask you to read chapter 4, and we'll have a quiz on chapter 3 next week (Mon or Tues).

Tuesday HW

Good work today! Well, B period at least. Other classes haven't happened yet.

Your homework tonight is page 39: 19, 23, 27, 37.

Tomorrow in class I'll check both this problem set as well as the weekend's (see below), and so you'll have a double homework grade (4 points rather than two)--so make sure it's done! We'll discuss any questions/comments/concerns and move onto Independence to wrap up chapter 3.

If you come across unfamiliar vocabulary in tonight's homework, I expect you to flip back through the chapter to find out what's being asked--I see this coming up with marginal and conditional distributions.

Enjoy!

Labor Day Weekend!

It was nice to get into some Stats today; I'm looking forward to playing with numbers and graphs and such quite a bit more as we move through next week.

Today we got into chapter 3 a little bit; if you'd like to review or get a little ahead, you can find the powerpoint under "Powerpoints and Assignments." On Tuesday we'll finish this up, and Wed we'll start working with independence.

Homework: problems 5,7,9,10,11,12 from chapter 3 on the handout provided in class.

Also, remember you have a QUIZ TUESDAY--probably only about 10 minutes, and similar to the discussion questions you did for homework. You will also be asked to identify quantitative or categorical variables. The answer key to your homework questions can be found in the same place as the chapter 3 powerpoint.

Other than that, enjoy your weekend! Once we come back it's the real grind...

First Day Homework

Tonight your task is as follows:

Read the "Cell Phone" and "SAT" articles and answer the 11 questions about each. Provide your best thoughts for each answer; if you are unsure about a question, do your best.

I'm working on uploading the articles and questions electronically, but the site is giving me problems at the moment...it'll be there...

Will School Ever Start?

I hope you are all enjoying your extended summer vacation. Although it's nice for now, unfortunately our AP exam is in the beginning of May regardless--so we're just losing days to prepare for the test! Don't worry, we'll be fine, but we will have to hit the ground running as soon as we get into the classroom.

I'm typing up some discussion questions for day one as we speak. After some general ideas and practice to get us thinking statistically, we'll hope right into our text chapters and begin pushing through unit one. You can expect homework on the first day, and then a couple of days of notes followed by a quiz.

I can't wait to meet all of you and get to work! Thank you everyone who emailed me so I can have a compiled list--if you haven't, please do so (fred.carofano@gmail.com). I'm sorry I didn't respond to each email, I just wanted to get the address and it got monotonous writing the same response over and over.

For now, enjoy your waning (maybe?) days of summer, and I'll look forward to seeing you all on Thursday. Or Friday. or Tuesday. Sometime.

Summer Assignment: Using the Blog to Prepare for AP Stat

First off, thank you to those of you who have already emailed me! This is my first year having a class log for emails, and I think it should make the world of last-minute updates and information much easier!

One student asked the following: How should I use the blog to prepare for the first week? We'll be hopping right into our classwork on the first day, and you can anticipate having a quiz within the first few days of school. If you can use this blog to get ahead, you'll only be helping yourself. The course moves quickly; the more familiar you are with our goals and uses for Statistics, the better you will understand each topic.

Here are some tips to use the blog to prepare for AP Stat:

1. To start, look at what interests you the most. Read through some news stories (from any site), check out stats.org, pay attention to the news--just try to get a general idea of what Statistics is all about. This course is totally different than the math courses you've experienced thus far and we'll all be starting from scratch.
2. Listen to the "Stat Raps" (found under AP Statistics in the Classroom Powerpoints link, toward the bottom). Pay attention to the vocabulary used. It might even be a good idea to look at the lyrics and see what words you do and don't recognize, and even use the context of the song to figure out some of the meanings. We will frequently have vocabulary tests next year.
3. Check out ted.org and simply search "Statistics." Watch some of these videos--they're pretty interesting!
4. Specific to the course, you should take a look at the first few chapters of powerpoint slides to get an idea of what we'll be covering. Take this as far as you like--all of the notes (although they will be revised) are there for you to peek at.
5. Look at the different topics for the midterm exam to get an idea of what topics we will cover (Classroom Powerpoints link).
6. Look at the "Stat Tutorials" link to get an overview of any topic; focus on those we'll cover earlier in the year.
7. Use the "Using Your Graphing Calculator Link." We CONSTANTLY use our calculators; the more familiar you are with its use, the easier your life will be. You might want to make sure you know how to enter data in L1,L2, create different graphs (scatterplots, boxplots, and histograms) with your calculator, and calculate "1 Variable Statistics." We'll cover this in class, but you're better off being familiar with the calculator.
8. Look at some of the online practice exams to get a feel for the types of questions and the complexity of AP questions. Try some out--maybe you know more than you think!

If you were to do all of this you'll be way ahead of the game. We've still got a month to go, so you have plenty of time!

I'm currently taking class at UConn--and I have plenty of projects, reading, and homework to do--so I totally understand the burden of summer homework. But I also know you have ample time, so get on it!

I can't wait to meet you all and get started in August!

(Feel free to email me with any questions! fred.carofano@gmail.com)