danaleeling

A sexual harassment survey of 24 questions was distributed to a convenience sample of 46 students in a college statistics class. The 46 students surveyed included 24 females and 22 males. The course has 60 students enrolled, predominantly listing their state of residence as Pohnpei. The unmarked blue sliver is a single student from Chuuk. The survey was anonymous, thus there is no way to determine the actual state breakdown for the 46 students surveyed. The students were asked, "Which of the following do you believe is sexual harassment? (mark all that apply)" The prompts are listed in descending order from those prompts which obtained the most marks to the least marked items. Of note is that even forced sexual acts were not deemed sexual harassment by all 46 respondents. The survey did not seek to determine whether some students might have been separating sexual harassment from criminal sexual activity such as rape. Prompt Total n=46 Being forced to do something ...

For a second academic year the MS 150 Statistics course began with a problem solving open data exploration leading to a presentation. The exercise effectively flips the role of the students from that of being students in a class to that of being statisticians reporting on their statistical findings. This shift allows the instructor to begin the second week of class by saying, "I know you already know how to calculate statistics and make charts..." This gives the students an early sense of success and a sense that they can succeed in the course. The following article details the background to this exercise and reports on the exercise for the fall of 2017. For fifteen years the statistics course started with gathering data on body metrics and then launching into a lecture driven course. In 2008 I added statistics projects to the lecture and test mix in an attempt to both increase student engagement with statistics and to integrate more writing into the course. The statistics...

The fall term began with a laboratory that introduces measurement through the measurement of the density of soap. Redsea carves soap I began the laboratory with the Freeman Dyson quote: For a physicist mathematics is not just a tool by means of which phenomena can be calculated, it is the main source of concepts and principles by means of which new theories can be created... ...equations are quite miraculous in a certain way. ... the fact that nature talks mathematics, I find it miraculous. ... I spent my early days calculating very, very precisely how electrons ought to behave. Well, then somebody went into the laboratory and the electron knew the answer. The electron somehow knew it had to resonate at that frequency which I calculated. So that, to me, is something at the basic level we don't understand. Why is nature mathematical? But there's no doubt it's true. And, of course, that was the basis of Einstein's faith. I mean, Einstein talked that mathemat...

For twenty years, since 1997, MS 101 Algebra and Trigonometry has been taught in the A204 math science computer laboratory permitting the use of desktop computers in the course. Due to a scheduling conflict one section of the course was scheduled outside of the computer laboratory this term. The class was assigned to a classroom known as B201. B201 second floor, left end of B building By coincidence the college had just installed a new directional WiFi antenna that lit B201. New antenna atop south faculty building seen against the sky to the right of building center On the first day of class 14 of 21 registered students attended the class. I found that nine of the fourteen students had mobile technology - either a smartphone, tablet, or laptop. I also found that only five of the fourteen had a copy of the textbook, a textbook that retails for $294 dollars at the bookstore. Knowing that we needed graphing technology provided by Desmos , I saw the obvious solution. Have tho...

Underneath the focus on physical systems, SC 130 Physical Science is built on a foundation of connecting physical systems to their mathematical models and communicating the results in writing. Laboratory exercises lead to the writing of a full laboratory report that is marked for content, syntax, grammar, vocabulary, organization, and cohesion. Cutting soap to make a new volume versus mass measurement The majority of the laboratories investigate systems that involve a linear mathematical relationship. Reports include xy scatter graphs, best fit linear trend lines, slope, and y-intercept analysis. The course outline includes the learning outcome, "Students will generate mathematical models for physical science systems." This serves a general education program learning outcome, "Students will be able to present and interpret numeric information in graphic forms," which in turn serves an institutional learning outcome for quantitative reasoning: "Students ...