Teaching

This semester I'm teaching STA 270 Applied Statistics. It's definitely a step up from the class I taught last year in several ways. First, it's quite a bit more work (or a step up in the number of hours I spend preparing for class.) The class I taught last year was very structured. We pretty much were provided a day by day summary of what material we were supposed to cover and were provided weekly quizzes over whatever we were supposed to cover that week. 270, however, is not as structured. We were given a book and told to cover chapters 1-11. And that was it! It's completely up to each instructor how in depth to go with the material, what to skip, and how much time we spend on each topic. Secondly, it's much more fun! Last year I had to cover topics like the equation of a line. You know, y = mx + b. We also did some elementary graph theory. This year it's all statistics, all the time! Thirdly, the caliber of students is a little higher. Last year I had 80-90% freshman. Freshman sort of get a bad rap for being irresponsible and unprepared, which is not far from the truth. This year I have very few freshman and quite a few upperclassmen. This is nice because by the time you are a Junior or Senior in college you know how things work. You know you need to go to class, turn in your homework, etc. Upperclassmen tend to participate in class more, have learned that instructors like it when people laugh at their nerdy math jokes, and don't just stare at the instructor looking terrified.

I am giving the first exam in my classes next week. Here are some review problems I created. Number 6 was inspired by Luke!