All posts by Brian

R.I.P., Tark the Shark

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In what is arguably the most grueling week of the school year, we lost two college basketball coaching legends.

Earlier this week we said goodbye to Dean Smith.

This morning, we lost Jerry Tarkanian. Those early 90’s Runnin’ Rebels are still the greatest college basketball team that I have ever seen.1

Rest in peace, Tark.

  1. A lot of people say Larry Johnson should’ve shot that 3. I say Greg Anthony shouldn’t have fouled out. Looking back, that was actually a crazy time for a young teen to be a sports fan — Mike Tyson got knocked out (which by the way, was 25 years ago today), Duke upended the 34-0 Runnin’ Rebels, Michael beat Magic for his first ring, then Magic got HIV and retired. A real “bye, bye, Miss America Pie” stretch of sports history. [↩]
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That colorblind screen in the “Kingsman” trailer…

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If you’ve seen the trailer for the upcoming movie “Kingsman”, you may have noticed this (if not, cue to the 32 second mark of the official trailer).

Screen Shot 2015-02-07 at 4.31.12 AM

The above image flashes ever-so-briefly at the 0:32 mark, right after the “20th Century Fox” logo. Folks with red-green colorblindness — such as the author of this blog — may share an approximate version of the following thought:

“Fine, joke’s on us, what the &@#% did that say?”1

So, I was going to go on a huge rant about how it’s no less inexcusable to clown on the eight percent2 than it would be for any other disabled persons’ group.3

But it turns out it’s just the logo/name of the UK film production house.

Though I am still curious as to why the British folks at this company feel the need to throw up their name in an image that roughly one-in-every-dozen males are unable to see. Perhaps I give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that it has something to do with the movie.4 Or perhaps they’re trying to raise awareness for the colorblind?5

  1. Thanks to the wonders of modern-day image-editing software, I know what it says now. [↩]
  2. If you scroll down on that link a bit, there’s a side-by-side image comparison of what normal vision versus two common types of red/green colorblind vision looks like. I have no idea if it’s truly accurate, but the point is: It’s subtle. Very subtle. [↩]
  3. Which by the way, when — or how, rather — did that become a thing of trend? Whatever. We’ll have our day. I’m waiting for the day where someone figures out how to encode things such that ONLY colorblind folks will be able to see them. I don’t think that’s scientifically possible but whatever. [↩]
  4. Though with emphasis on the word “doubt”. [↩]
  5. I do rather hope they’re not meaning to poke fun at the eight percent. We’re colorblind, after all – not billy goats in a petting zoo. [↩]
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If you thought “fecal matter on lemons” was bad…

Maroon9, Reading List

Among New York Subway’s Millions of Riders, a Study Finds Many Mystery Microbes

From the story at the above link, emphasis mine:

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College released a study on Thursday that mapped DNA found in New York’s subway system — a crowded, largely subterranean behemoth that carries 5.5 million riders on an average weekday, and is filled with hundreds of species of bacteria (mostly harmless), the occasional spot of bubonic plague, and a universe of enigmas. Almost half of the DNA found on the system’s surfaces did not match any known organism and just 0.2 percent matched the human genome.

What.

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Five Blocks

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il_340x270.569449596_mrf0

We don’t have any major exams or group quizzes in my Stat classes this week.

We didn’t have any last week, either.

And sometime around lunch today, that struck me as quite odd.

Given our current six-weeks grading system, a major exam date — each of which is immediately preceded by a “group quiz” review day — needs to be scheduled about every two-and-half weeks. Since these “group quiz / test” dates don’t involve actively teaching all day, they’re about as close as we get to a break in the schedule.1

And because of the A-B block schedule on which our high schools operate, it is incredibly rare to hit a two-week stretch of classes completely devoid of these cadences.

This is the first time this school year that I’ve had two full work weeks2 of teaching without a major quiz or test.3

Wooden-LEGO-Building-Blocks-1

But being that teachers are creatures of rhythm and habit, it felt so strange to me that I had to go back and look up previous years’ calendars to figure out the last time this has happened.

It never happened last year.4

Nor did it happen the year before that.

In fact, I haven’t had two straight weeks of actual teaching since three years ago5 at this same spot in the campaign.

And THAT is about the extent of the news-worthiness of week number twenty one.

We are now almost done with inference with proportions, which means we’ve made it through the turbulence, and the rest of the ride is relatively downhill.6

  1. And if you know the type of chaos that can ensue in tutorials on these days — never mind the grading — you know that it’s not actually a “break” [↩]
  2. as in, 5-day work weeks [↩]
  3. Due to the brisk pace of the Fall semester, this is really the first time in the calendar that such a stretch is even possible. [↩]
  4. Thanks in part to the ice days. [↩]
  5. Season 5, back when I was still using Arial on my calendars [↩]
  6. Knock on wood. [↩]
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No (d)ice

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Photo Nov 15, 11 38 19 AM

By my count, that’s about how many new lessons we have left to teach this year,1 before we finish the regular portion of the course,2 after which the “real work”3 begins. 4

Currently, we’re teaching Type I/II errors and statistical power.

Bonus material from the early seasons, which won't even see that little light of day in the more current campaigns.
Bonus material from the early seasons, which won’t even see that little light of day in the more current campaigns.

Rather, we’re just barely5 scraping the surface of statistical power – a topic that we barely touch and hardly do justice.6

Last year at this time, we were on the verge of losing the 3rd of the three “ice” days.7 Oftentimes I think back with wonder about how we were able to make it through losing three A-days while barely skipping a beat.8

oh ice where art thou // now that we really want you // my haiku to ice.
My haiku to ice: oh ice where art thou // you are nowhere to be found // now that we want you.

And actually, now that I know that it’s possible to lose three class days and still make it through relatively unscathed, I’d been halfway hoping for some ice to come our way…

Sadly, no (d)ice.

  1. Only 8! But if you turn that “8” on its side, you get “infinity” — which, while technically not a number, is closer to what it’ll feel like, due in part to the numerous “fluff” days that are sprinkled into the calendar for the next couple of units. [↩]
  2. which I like to think of as the “regular season” [↩]
  3. AP Exam prep — the portion of the course that I think of as “the playoffs” [↩]
  4. If you’re curious about the 8 lessons: 2-prop z; 1-sample t; 2-sample t; matched pairs; chi-squared GOF; chi-squared 2-way; inference with slope. That’s seven, but at least one of them gets split over two days. I did say “about”… [↩]
  5. and oh, I do mean BARELY [↩]
  6. but given the complexity of the topic, possibly not a bad idea. [↩]
  7. Along with a half-day which proved to be wholly unnecessary… but was surely a politicized over-compensation for not deciding to cancel school for the 2nd ice day until after some kids had gotten to school. [↩]
  8. It was only possible due to the aforementioned “fluff” days… [↩]
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