IPS - Reflection

Well, the semester is over and it is obvious that I still need to make further revisions to the material. The big issue is that students did not make any connection between the simulations, redistribution sampling, and bootstrap samples to random events. Looking back, I can see that introducing the software too early stripped students from making a connection between their data and what things could look like.

The overall tendency was for students to just find an average compare against a hypothetical and call it good. They did not consider the issue that their sample results will change every time they take a sample. As a result, if their sample was larger than the hypothesized value, they would simply say it was larger.

I am going back through the order of material and how topics are introduced. I think I need to start the class right from the beginning thinking about questions of interest and hypotheses. I also need to then focus on what happens as we repeatedly measure a result; how is the random variations in results accounted for and used to address the hypotheses we made?

I am also planning on revamping the probability section. For this class, students need to understand probability models and expected values as they prepare simulations. They also need to understand what conditional probabilities are and what it means for events to be independent. But the focus needs to be on probability of outcomes given random events.

Students need to be more attuned to random sampling techniques and experimental design. I am thinking of eliminating the hand-washing study since it is an observational study. I think a study requiring sampling will be more helpful to students.

By using more investigations and studies, I can work with students on ways to analyze the data. My hope is this change will make students more adept at understanding how data is collected and what they should do to analyze that data.

I still need to consider how early to introduce the inference piece of the analysis. I think the basic ideas can be introduced early on and that the specific techniques can be developed as the semester continues.

Finally, I need to make revisions to the final exam scenarios. Especially if students are a little fuzzy on the concepts they have no idea of how to proceed.

I was pleased with the trajectory of topics when I taught the class first semester. But the modifications made for this semester actually look like a step backward. I am disappointed in the slippage but will use the results from this semester to revise and hopefully put the course on a better path.

I would be interested to hear from anyone else who is teaching high school statistics classes that are not AP Statistics and not covering classical statistics. Leave a comment and we can get a discussion going.