danaleeling

An anonymous preassessment briefly looked at some of the graphical mathematical skills the students have in my fall 2025 courses. The preassessment also asked a few basic linear calculations. The preassessment was sent via a link in an email to the 137 students in my courses for fall 2025. The survey was completed anonymously, remotely, and unsupervised. 36 students responded to the preassessment.  The students were in both mathematical and non-mathematical courses. The survey asked some math course background questions, and then presented the following questions. The survey included images for graphical questions.  Which of the points is at the coordinate (3,1)? What is the slope of the line on the graph? Enter the slope as a decimal value. What is the y-intercept of the line on the graph? Which line on the graph matches the data in the time versus distance table? If a person is running at 2.58 meters per second, how far will they go in 3600 seconds? Do not include the unit...

Warning Coordination Meteorologist Marcus Landon Aydlett visited the college and gave a presentation on the western north Pacific tropical systems outlook for fall 2025. After introductions he explained the region NWS Guam is responsible for. He also spoke about typhoon Mawar which struck Guam in May 2023. When a tropical storm is moving on the waters of the NWS region, Landon is the lead meteorologist responsible for ensuring communications are clear, timely, accurate, and communicated via as many media as possible. Protecting lives and property is the mission of NWS Guam when a tropical system is moving through the islands of their region. During the time a typhoon is threatening islands, Landon remains at the weather service office around the clock, catching only brief naps until the threat has passed. Landon covered drought status reporting that comes from NWS Guam. NWS Guam provides wildfire risk assessment for Guam and supports firefighters with the inform...

The week began with the seedless vascular plants presentation. The presentation saw additional images added and slides based on the Book of Luelen to provide support for local plant names, especially kideu ang ulungen kieil. An early arrival provided time to set up the board more thoughtfully. The presentation in its present configuration ran through to 16:45, perhaps 15 minutes longer than is reasonable. Perhaps the gametophyte, sporophyte explanation could be trimmed, simplified, and tightened. Maybe a chromosomal diagram would help speed up the explanation. Perhaps the new Luelen portion of the presentation could be tightened up as well.  Thursday dawned with flooding rains but gave way to sunny midday skies. The class launched on a cold open at 15:28 and headed to the northeast corner where all of the usual suspects are already located. The Phlegmariurus phlegmaria is very well developed on the first mango. On stump past the second mango at the edge of ...

This term a decision was made to start zero meters at the LRC. This puts 30 meters at the entrance to the faculty building. Zero off of LRC plays well with acceleration from rest next week.  Keeping this coordinate grid may invert the parabola on deceleration and acceleration a week from Wednesday. The downside would be that d₀ would no longer be zero. Another impact would be the likely generation of imaginary roots as the parabola wouldn't teach the x-axis. This would be confusing at best. Better to start at t=0, d=0 with d₀ = 0. The thirty meter RipStik run. Despite the first 12 meters having a slope, velocity was fairly consistent. Start was up by the solar panel electrical closet with a ninety degree turn in to the run. 1.96 meters per second is a reasonable velocity, in line with historic values. Wednesday's walking exercise used the existing 30 meters off of the LRC. The goals were for the students to gain further familiarit...

Quartiles are usually introduced by lining everyone up tallest to shortest and then finding the quartiles for height.  This term spheres were substituted and a spreadsheet was prepped to assist during the lecture-demonstration. This went well, especially as having the data on the Smartboard permitted using markers to mark up the data. The data was the following: Type Mass (grams) Ball golf 45.7 Ball ping pong 2.7 BB 0.3 Billiard mini 56.9 Duck marble blue 3.9 Duck marble metal 16.3 Duck marble orange 5.4 Duck marble silver blue 5.1 Duck marble small 1.6 Sphere iron large 234 Sphere iron small 81.5 Superball 22.4 Taw large 54.3 Taw medium 21.2 Taw small 18.9 Which produced the following box plot in Statisty :

Day one was a course introduction. Day two opened with an overview of the preassessment results. This chewed up too much time and didn't leave time to have the students make a density calculation. Recommendation is to drop this review in future terms. Forgotten: 500 ml water bottle. Not forgotten but almost: a kilo of sugar. Wednesday hear included two 1000 ml Erlenmeyer flasks, a recently acquired 300 ml beaker, Silka papaya soap, ruler  mass balance, and the usual collection of rectangular blocks and cubes. The Silka would prove to a fail. Silka would come in at 88 grams, 2 grams under the packed mass. The lecture-demonstration followed the usual arc as seen in the board shots below. With the soap in the 300 ml beaker, water was added up to the 300 ml mark. The soap was sitting on the bottom of the beaker. Then the soap was removed. Reading the new mark was problematic. With a habit of overestimating volume, the error wa...