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Aug. 24th, 2007
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Fall Semester
Aug. 24th, 2007 02:53 pmThe new semester has begun. This term, all of my classes are Tuesday/Thursday. I'm teaching GenEd Statistics between 11:00 and 1:45 (two sections of the same class, back to back, in the same building - three stories apart :groan:) and the Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometry course 7:30-8:45. Long days....
I haven't taught statistics in about three years, and the textbook is in a new edition. I'm not very happy with it. It's gone through three or four editions since I first taught the course, and in my opinion it's been dumbed down each time. Still, just because the text omits certain techniques and ideas doesn't mean I have to. (For example, in the book's discussion of how to construct a Simple Random Sample, there's a simple tweak which makes things work much faster, but which the book doesn't mention. Yesterday, I ran through an example, first following the book's recommendation, then with the modification; the second pass went much faster. They can do things the book's way or the modified way - they'll get full credit either way - but I want them to know their options.)
To be honest, I didn't do a very good job in stat the first day, but I think I've got things moving better now. The geometry class is going fairly well, I think, but somebody took the globe I use for the section on spherical geometry. I can't complain; it obviously belonged to the geography department (or maybe history), not mathematics, but it was awfully handy!
I haven't taught statistics in about three years, and the textbook is in a new edition. I'm not very happy with it. It's gone through three or four editions since I first taught the course, and in my opinion it's been dumbed down each time. Still, just because the text omits certain techniques and ideas doesn't mean I have to. (For example, in the book's discussion of how to construct a Simple Random Sample, there's a simple tweak which makes things work much faster, but which the book doesn't mention. Yesterday, I ran through an example, first following the book's recommendation, then with the modification; the second pass went much faster. They can do things the book's way or the modified way - they'll get full credit either way - but I want them to know their options.)
To be honest, I didn't do a very good job in stat the first day, but I think I've got things moving better now. The geometry class is going fairly well, I think, but somebody took the globe I use for the section on spherical geometry. I can't complain; it obviously belonged to the geography department (or maybe history), not mathematics, but it was awfully handy!
