 | Hi, and welcome to Mr. Quinn's Class dot com. That's me in the picture. The bald one.I am a teacher at Noble High School in North Berwick,
Maine. I'm teaching sophomore algebra and geometry as well as a section of statistics this year.This page is intended to be a central place for access to information that might
be useful to students and parents, with news, assignments, and other class-related content. Links are to the right, news is below. Enjoy! |
Week 12: 27 November - 1 December
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Welcome back from thanksgiving break! The staff at Noble took part in our Fall Conference, which was really pretty great -- I got to talk about and think about a lot of things that will directly impact my practice, and which will hopefully help you guys in turn.
This week, both classes will be looking at probability in detail. Algebra students won't go quite as far in terms of the complexity of the problems we look at, but the basic ideas will be pretty similar.
We're now almost 2/3 of the way through the term, and as always the 3-week makeup window for NY's is in effect, so make sure that you're staying on top of things. Also, we'll move from rows of 3 to groups of 4 this week -- i'm more comfortable there, and it'll give everyone more people to talk to and learn from, so it's a win for everyone.
posted by henry |
4:56 PM|
Week 11: 13 - 17 November
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Another week down, and one more to go until thanksgiving. The stats tests from last week looked largely quite good, which makes me happy. And my algebra classes held things together during one of the most difficult topics in all of high school algebra, so they've got a lot to be proud of, too.
Statistics in the Noble progression turns now to a look at probability. This is different from how I've done things in the past, but i think it's going to work out fine. This week, we'll introduce some basic ideas, and get a look at the law of large numbers.
In algebra, we're turning away from algebra and turning to statistics, that seemingly vestigial tail of sophomore math. For me, this is the best, most important, and most useful portion of the course, and it's also the most fun to teach. If it were up to me, in fact, I think i'd teach sophomores a year of stats with maybe a little algebra thrown in where it's neccessary. In any event, we're going to make the best of the time that we have, and look at sampling and presenting quantitative data.
posted by henry |
9:09 AM|
Week 10: 6-9 November
Monday, November 06, 2006
Well, we've made it to a 4-day week, and we'll be celebrating our Veterans on Friday, which means that Thanksgiving is just around the corner. Of course, we all know that math stops for no one, so we'll be chugging along, but you'll pardon me if I take a moment to mark the passage of time.
This week in Algebra, we'll be looking at factoring quadratics where a isn't 1. Usually, this is pretty horrible, but I've found a really cool algorithm that makes use of all of our other factoring skills and doesn't require nearly so much trial and error. We'll also look at factoring the difference of two squares, and this should wrap up our study of factoring.
Stats will be reviewing on Tuesday and taking an exam on thursday. It's going to be fine, and I'm going to be giving you the actual exam to look at before you take it -- no mess, no pressure, no surprises. That's what we in the business call 'authentic'.
As usual, do check to the right for NY make-up info, and see me sooner rather than later about just about anything.
posted by henry |
8:14 PM|
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