[MATHEDCC] coming back to earth

Rob Kimball (rlkimbal@WTCC-GW.WAKE.TEC.NC.US)
Mon, 9 Nov 1998 11:40:01 -0500 (EST)

so, 9 am class on Monday after a full day of traveling
from the left coast to the right coast...
some where in the class, after some discussion on
variation and standard deviation and after we explored
the value of STDEV in Excel, I posed the question
"so what things do we need to take into account as
we calculate (by hand) the standard deviation?"
A student in the back of the room gave me a pretty good
answer that said something about the mean and the distance
a value is from the mean. I looked around
and asked another student to put into their own words what
he had said. The first student I asked said "Huhh?" The
second student said she didn't hear the first response. The
third just sat there...

I waited a minute before asking the question again and thought
of all the good things Leslie Johnson had said in her workshop
on "Cognitive Psychology and Instruction: Enhancing the Learning
Experience" and of Paul Nolting's session on "Teaching your
students math study skills" and then repeated the question.

Thanks to all who made the conference a good one...
Rob
Robert L Kimball 919-662-3602 (Office)
Chair, Mathematics and Physics Dept 919-266-0850 (Home)
Wake Technical Community College Raleigh, NC 27603-5696

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