Mid-Semester Survey

Please fill out the Mid-Semester Survey linked below.  You will be asked to log in with your Missouri Western account so that every student is limited to 1 response; however, your email will not be recorded with your responses.  That is, your responses are anonymous.  Please answer honestly.  Note that you are also asked to vote on the next topic we will cover after finance.

Mid-Semester Survey

Finance

This week, we will begin a new unit on Financial Math. Please make sure you print out the notes and bring them with you to class.  We will start this week with a discussion of interest - simple interest and compound interest.  There will be a lot of formulas in this unit, and you will need to practice with them to get comfortable using them.  I will provide you with the formulas (unlabeled) for the exam, so you need to focus on identifying what formulas apply to what problems.  In addition, it will be very important to remember your calculator for class every day in this unit - you don't want to have to do these calculations by hand! Those of you in lab should have been reviewing logarithms and exponentials in that class recently.  We will be using logarithms to help solve problems in this unit; if you need additional review of logarithms, please see me.  The webpage below is also a good source of review for problems involving logs and exponents.

Exponential and Logarithmic Equations

We will be starting with simple and compound interest on Tuesday.   I recorded a video lecture over simple and compound interest last time I taught this class (linked below).  

Mid-term grades will be submitted on Wednesday.  For those of you looking to improve your grade, remember that this unit doesn't build on the content from the previous two units, so you have a fresh start with Finance.  The homework (both online and the paper homework) is an important component of your grade.  Doing the homework is what prepares you to do well on the exam.  If you haven't been keeping up with the homework, now is a good time to start.  Come see me in office hours if you find you are struggling on the homework.  Finally, remember that you get points for participating with the blog.  Click on some links and comment about what you read.  These are easy points and you shouldn't miss out on getting them!  (In the comments on this post, tell me what you hope to learn in this unit and why.)

Extra Lecture Video

I made a video last semester over the most recent material covered in MAT110(E).  I have linked the video below if you would like to use this to review this material.

Remember that our Probability and Statistics exam will be in class on Thursday, March 8.  An exam review is posted in the Handouts folder linked on the right side of the blog.  You should try the review problems before class on Tuesday and be prepared with questions you have during class. 

Statistics - Normal Distributions

This week, we are moving forward with our discussion of statistics into Normal Distributions.  You will need your calculators and the z-score table from the end of the notes in class with you every day. The Math is Fun website has a nice interactive Standard Normal Distribution and introduction to the Standard Normal Distribution.  I recommend that you play around with this to get a better understanding of what we are discussing in class.

There is a review worksheet over the standard normal distribution in the Handouts folder linked on the right side of the blog.  I have also posted solutions to the Probability and Counting review in this folder. 

The website fivethirtyeight.com uses a lot of data and publishes articles about their findings.  Visit the site and in the comments describe what you found there.  How does it relate to the statistics we discussed in class?

Challenge Problem (Due Tuesday, March 6): The website fivethirtyeight.com deals with a lot of data and publishes articles on their findings.  Visit the page https://data.fivethirtyeight.com and choose a data set and article to look at.  Read the article.  How do they use the data in the data set?  Download the data (you may need to right-click to download) and try computing some statistics with it.  

No Class Thursday February 22 - Please watch video

There will be no class on Thursday, February 22 due to inclement weather.  I have created a video over the first portion of the statistics notes.  Please watch the video below to make up for the missed class today.

No Class Tuesday February 20

Campus is closed Tuesday, February 20 due to inclement weather.  We will not be having class today.  To make up for this missed class, I have posted a review of Counting and Probability in the Handouts folder linked on the right side of the blog.  You should try these problems on your own and let me know if you have any trouble.  I will be using these reviews in my lab sections on Wednesday to review with my lab students.  Lecture students who are not normally in my labs are welcome to attend these labs to review.  The lab times and locations are listed below.

Wednesday, February 21 9:00 am Murphy 113
Wednesday, February 21 10:00 am  Agenstein 328

Statistics

This week we are moving into statistics.  You'll definitely want to make sure you have your calculator in class with you this week and next.  Statistics is the study of data.  We will start by looking at some ways to organize numerical data and compute some basic numerical summaries, then we'll move into Normal distributions and confidence intervals.

The article "Take a statistics and probability class in college" from slate.com argues that everyone should take a course in statistics and probability.  We aren't able to cover everything that would be covered in an entire semester of statistics, but hopefully after this unit is over, you will have a better understanding of what we mean when we talk about the probability of a person getting the flu or when a newscaster says a candidate has a 70% approval rate in the polls.

The website www.fivethirtyeight.com computes all sorts of statistics.  They also have a weekly "riddle" that uses math, logic, or probability in an interesting way.  Choose one "Riddler" question and read the solution.  (Or try to solve it yourself.)  Were you able to understand the solution?  What didn't you understand?  Were you surprised by the answer?  Print out the riddle and its solution from the website and write a paragraph discussing the riddle and the questions above.  You can go directly to the archive of "Riddler" articles at https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/the-riddler/.

I will be late to my office hours on Tuesday, February 20.  I hope to be there by 10:00am, but I will also be in my office from 2:00-3:00pm.