We actually worked on Algebra concepts in class today. The next topic for us to cover is a section on scatter plots and best fit of a line, so I needed to continue with the concepts Marcos has been learning in Algebra. I gave him specific examples of writing equations from lines in Point-Slope Form. He has to use 2 points on a graph to determine the slope of the line, then use a point and the slope to write the equation in point-slope form. We will then use this concept to find an equation of a reasonable trend line for scatter plots.
Today was a school Christmas party. Marcos spent the first 30 minutes making an ornament, and then we worked on statistics. He continued working on the exercises on p.197. He made a graph of the probability of landing with 4 tails when 4 coins are tossed. He then looked at a compounded probability situation with replacement. He answered questions about the probability of picking certain letter cubes out of a bag when replacing the cubes after each pick. He also answered questions about the probability of certain situations when given the odds of that situation. The odds of an event is the ration of the possibility of it occurring to the possibility of it not occurring.
A discrete probability distribution displays the probability of certain outcomes when there are countable items in the sample space. Marcos performed two experiments with countable results. The first was to roll 2 number cubes 20 times, and record the different sums. He made a graph of the results, and checked to make sure that the sum of the probabilities added to 100%. He the started an experiment where he tossed 4 coins and recorded the number of tails that occurred from each toss. He had time to complete the experiment, but will have to continue the graph the next session.
We discussed the definition of median, upper quartile, lower quartile, and outliers. Marcos drew two box and whisker plots, and analyzed the data they represented. We also looked at a box and whisker plot that represented monthly rainfall amounts in Miami and New Orleans. We discussed how the box and whisker plot helped us see that New Orleans actually has more rainy months than Miami. Marcos worked problems on p. 52-53 of the Algebra book.
