Week 5 T-Table, Normal Curve, Benchmark

During and after this class I felt dumb. I have trouble keeping track of all of the different formulas and concepts and remembering which one is used in which situation. I wish I had more time to really review everything at my own pace before the "activity" tomorrow. Doing a group and individual project, as well as studying for the final "activity", was a bit overwhelming this week.

During class 5 we learned about the t-test and various related concepts. Before that we talked about the normal curve.

Doing the exercises on the sheets and discussing them during class did help. It was a good class session, it's just that there is much to remember and it all sort of blends together in such a condensed program.

Week 4 - r, correlation, pearson and spearman

In the week 4 class we learned about correlating data and calculating a figure called "r". Excel sure is handy with these statistical calculations. I wonder what they did in "the old days". The Pearson and Spearman formulas can be used in different situations but usually do arrive at about the same number. One of the most difficult aspects of statistics and this class is remembering all of the formulas and concepts and which formula does what. It's a lot to take in in a short time. It's probably keeping my brain on its toes, so to speak.

Statistics Week 3

I am very concerned about the benchmark (test) we will be taking tonight. We learned about the z number and did some other calculations. Hopefully, we will have a good review before doing the benchmark.

Technology question - is there a way to link a downloaded video to a powerpoint presentation? If I have the video saved somewhere on my computer can I somehow embed a link to it in m powerpoint?

What are some good websites for converting files? Converting online video files to WMV?

Cedu 549 Statistics Week #2

During the last class we learned about many formulas for figuring out mean, standard deviation, median, etc. It is possible to do this with a calculator or maybe even free hand, but the formulas are available in Excel and Google Docs Spreadsheet. We began working on the descriptive project in our group meeting last evening and came across some strange MS Excel behaviors. Hopefully those problems will not occur while we are working on the benchmark tomorrow. I would like to know if anyone has any ideas about why we were having these problems. We were using PCs at school. Maybe we could discuss this in class.

The descriptive project is a very good practice run for our own research studies, I think. I think it will help to prepare us for summarizing and describing our own data. We have begun working on it as a group, so we have a good start already.

I am interested to know if anyone knows of any helpful or fun websites related to statistics. I am an elementary school library media specialist so I am always looking for good websites to pass along to teachers.

Make-Up Blog for Statistics Week 1

In week one of statistics we learned about many basic concepts and terms that will provide a foundation as we move further into the subject matter. I think this will be a fun class and a little different than many of our previous classes. I am glad that we are learning how to do research and report our findings as these are skills that are fundamental to the academic community. I think this entire process of planning for and carrying out an action research plan will benefit me as an educator. Hopefully I will have a solid idea of how to quantify and report my findings as a result of this course.