We were requested to attend a school-wide meeting regarding possible upcoming charity/volunteer/community service work in the upcoming holidays. It was a very interesting event.
We still have a bit of revision to do vis a vis combining probabilities, but in the meantime I thought we should move on in probability theory. So today we started delving into Probability Distributions by exploring the concept of 'expected value', which in technical terms is the theoretical mean outcome for infinitely many trials. This has important implications in the field of decision theory.
Session Minutes
45
Minutes Student Attended
45
Lesson Comments
Ditto as for the Algebra comment – it was so nice to see Jared more relaxed and looking ahead, instead of ruminating on what has passed.
We were unable to get through all of the information for his test tomorrow, but he followed what we did get through. He needs to review residuals a bit more.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
He doesn't seem to care about his classes and admits that he was forced into the IB. He told me he lacked the motivation because of this and has a plan laid out for after he graduates. He is difficult to keep in task and just lacks the interest. He is very smart and picks things up well when he wants to. He should pass tomorrow but that depends on his review tonight.
Despite Jared's almost innate ability to compute any single probability on the fly, he still experiences some difficulties understanding how the probabilities of two events – dependent or independent – are calculated. We started reviewing this when we (I! Jared knew about this) had a pleasant surprise in the form of a visit from Anne-Marie. It was great meeting her! It was especially nice to see how happy Jared was when she showed up.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
It was absolutely touching to see how Jared melted when Anne-Marie showed up at the door behind my back – Nevertheless despite, or maybe because of, her presence Jared was fairly focused and engaged for the last fifteen minutes or so of class.
We still had a few problems that we needed to review after last week's test, all involving the concept of combining probabilities. We did just that, after Jared worked on yesterday's homework exercises that were directly related to this subject.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
It was a bit difficult to get Jared to settle down this afternoon after his lunch break (he had fun playing football with kids out back ... so sweet! ... I was just thinking earlier today how wonderful it has been to see Jared's progress with integrating into school life as compared to last year ...) but when he did, he worked quite well in class.
Today we went through Jared's answers on last week's Probability test. As with Algebra, the material he knows, he knows well! But it's sometimes a bit more difficult to gauge what topics he's a bit shakier on. After last week's test, I now know, and in the days to come we shall be reviewing these topics until Jared fully understands them.
Assignment
Textbook p. 541: Read paragraph on dependent, independent, mutually exclusive events; Complete problems 42–48
Session Minutes
45
Minutes Student Attended
45
Lesson Comments
Once I got Jared to settle down in class (today was rather disruptive due to a whole bunch of external issues) he was very cooperative, and appeared to be eager to learn where he had gone wrong in last week's test – I obviously began today's class by telling him what he had done right, and I always praise his innate mathematical capabilities and the hard work he does ... so it was very gratifying to witness Jared's willingness to learn, and to see that he understood that when he got something wrong it was because he hadn't quite paid attention in the classes in which we covered that material ... but he was aware of it, and did not castigate himself.
Jared took a test today on the Introduction to Probability. This test covered most of the concepts that we have looked at over the past few weeks. Following the test, we spent some time looking at the idea of the complement of an event – in other words, if the probability of an event A is P(A) then its complement is P(A') = 1 – P(A). This was in preparation for understanding the Birthday Paradox which states that you only need to have 23 people in a room to have a 50% probability that two people share a birthday. This is not entirely intuitive, most of us tend to think the number of people must be higher. But a straightforward probability calculation shows this to be the case.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
It was so nice to see Jared in such a good mood! We had an excellent set of classes today, a great way to wrap up this section on Probability.
Jared will sit a test on the Basics of Probability tomorrow, so in today's class we reviewed the material that he needs to know. We also continued with the data gathering for statistics project Jared is working on.
Assignment
Finish yesterdays' homework and revise for tomorrow
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
I have to say that it was touching to see how excited Jared was about tonight's high school fair ... I'm sure he'll be a great ambassador for the school! But kudos to him, he managed to focus quite well in class despite his excitement – he was certainly more cooperative than yesterday, which just made the atmosphere that much lighter. But his excitement was certainly very cute (and he must never know I used that word!!)
