IPS - Day 17

Today was a bit odd. This was the Friday of Spirit Week and there was a spirit assembly before this class. Being the last period of the day for most people, they were anything but in a mindset to focus on mathematics.

I started the class by rearranging seats partially because it was about time to do this and partially to try to get students more focused on what was going on in class.

We continued our work on the Abby's Kennel investigation. Today's work focused on the definition of independence and on conditional probabilities. The investigation defines the independence of two events, A and B by comparing P(A and B) to P(A)P(B). If these two values are equal the events are independent.

The conditional probability P(A | B) is defined and there are comparisons made between the situations of P(A | B) and P(A | C), where event A is calculated given A and then given B. When these two values are equal, it is another indication of independence.

Of course, some students didn't get very far and some rushed through the questions without really considering why they were doing certain calculations and what their results meant. I had to have them go back and explain more about what was happening and what it means.

I'll use these series of questions as the next portfolio problem as conditional probabilities and independence play a key role in what we'll be doing throughout the semester.

Visit the class summary to view a student's perspective of the class.