danaleeling

The Wednesday diagram on chronograph use was still on the board. This introduction including the equation works well to prepare the students for the lab on Thursday. Walking speed and chronograph use was on Wednesday, on the right is the Thursday laboratory. An El Niño southwest wind generated a south wind between the buildings. The venturi effect increased the crosswind speed. Despite this, the ball generally rolled straight. The slight slope offsets friction quite nicely. Marks every 1.5 meters for the slow ball roll. Practice roll The moderate speed ball was timed on three meter intervals. The fast ball on six meter intervals.  Recording data directly into Desmos.  Back in the classroom by 09:46. Demonstrating 0 m/s and the impossibility of a vertical line. Played Billy Preston's nothing from nothing. Right board. Left board including coverage ...

Day one was a course introduction and coverage of the technology used in the course. Soap for the first laboratory was acquired at Yoshie. The loss of both floating Ivory soap and the absence of other square bars of soap led to the decision to use Lux 80 gram bars. The six pack was not previously seen on island. Sixty-five cents a bar, $3.90 for the six pack. Three six packs were purchased. Petty cash was not used for this purchase. With an enrollment of 31 a week out from class, 18 bars were acquired. Students working in pairs provides sufficient soap for 36. Fresh soap is necessary each term as fresh soap is softer, easier and safer to carve. Old soap hardens making carving harder. The soap also tends to fracture and crumble. Since volume errors almost always lead to overestimates of the density, no group should obtain contradictory results. The soap will be predicted to sink and will sink. Day two Day two covered measurement, units of measurement, and density. This follo...

On Monday a RipStik was ridden at a steady velocity for 30 meters with split times taken every three meters. Start was at the LRC. This simply works better for maintaining a constant velocity against friction. Day two of velocity was walking speed and how to use the chronograph Students walked 30 meters using the chronograph to record times every three meters. 

Day two was tech Thursday in class. A presentation on iNaturalist was done including a demonstration of an observation using a photo previously captured on the tablet.  By 16:12 the class was headed into the field, with the destination being the patch of forest with Campnosperma brevipetiolatum just beyond the student center. Nothing out there is planted. No trail was precut. Day three opened with uploading an image with no EXIF data. The result was an observation with no date and no location data. That observation was saved and then edited to demonstrate how to go back in and set the date, time, and location manually.  There were 28 students in the forest. A student later commented that they could not hear me nor discern what plants I was speaking about: the group was simply too large. The need to couple field walks with presentations on what will be seen is clearly more critical than in the past.  After this the seedless vascular plants slides were shown in preparatio...

A massive 29 member class looms large over the curriculum this term. 28 of 29 attended day one. The plan was a cold open into the field, but that was, as expected, complexified by backpacks, books, and inappropriate field wear. The open was in the classroom, attendance, and then out into the field to see if some might take the opportunity to slip away.  A day one plant names list was prepared from the class flora . All course information and technology will be reserved to Thursday.  Starting with the Premna serratifolia, a wide arc was cut under drippy skies from the roadside Hibiscus tiliaceus all the through to Palhinhaea cernua. The last plant was a Campnosperma brevipetiolatum below the Palhinhaea cernua. Wrap was at 4:30 on this arc.  Knowledge levels of plants remains in free fall.

As part of an introduction to MS 150 Statistics I showed the students how to enter a few basic statistical functions into a spreadsheet . I then used a Gemini notebook (formerly NotebookLM) preloaded with the textbook chapters to check the work. I started with a prompt: I want to give you some data followed by some statistical questions along with my answers. I want you to check my answers. The data: Car speed in mph 21.2 21.2 . . . 21.2 20.0 The questions: Statistic to calculate Sample size n Mode Median Sample mean x̅ Answers 18 21.2 20 20.3 Note that in the above the data was clipped, the original prompt included all of the data. Gemini/NotebookLM responded with the following analysis: Gemini notebook correctly discerned that the data set was multi-modal. There is a mode.mult function that can be used to return values in a polymodal data set, but that is not usually covered in the course.  The takeaway is that Gemini notebook correctly parsed and responded to a multipart prompt...

This term a course introduction presentation was used to organize the material on the first day. The session included a demonstration of entering formulas into a spreadsheet . A demonstration of NotebookLM/Gemini notebook was done after the spreadsheet demonstration. In a notebook that was already pre-populated with the textbook chapters the following prompt was entered using shift-enter to prevent premature submission: I want to give you some data followed by some statistical questions along with my answers. I want you to check my answers. The data: Car speed in mph 21.2 21.2 . . . 21.2 20.0 The questions: Statistic to calculate Sample size n Mode Median Sample mean x̅ Answers 18 21.2 20 20.3 Notebook responded with the following analysis: After this demonstration the first data exploration was shown, MMs distributed, and massed using the scale. 

"What is 120 plus 12?" I asked the student. The student and I were measuring the circumference of a hoop that exceeded the length of the 120 inch tape measure. The student had chosen to measure the circumference and to use inches. The tape measure was 12 inches short of the circumference, the student was holding the tape measure showing that the gap remaining was 12 inches. The student looked up from the measurement in hand and said nothing. I waited.  Students in a prior term timing the period of a hoop. The period of a hoop is linearly related to the diameter. "Just add the 12 to the 120, what is 12 more than 120?" The student looked at me blankly. I waited. After twenty seconds, the student asked, "I can use my cell phone calculator?" The student pulled out their cell phone and obtained 132.  "You couldn't do that calculation in your head?" I asked. The student indicated that they could not.  ❖ "Plummeting math scores prompted lawmake...