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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Qualitative Analysis Of Corequisite Instruction In A Quantitative Reasoning Course, Zachary Beamer
Qualitative Analysis Of Corequisite Instruction In A Quantitative Reasoning Course, Zachary Beamer
Inquiry: The Journal of the Virginia Community Colleges
In corequisite models of instruction, marginally prepared students are placed directly into college-level coursework, taught with a paired support course. Initial research suggests that such models yield significant improvements in the number of students passing credit-level mathematics when compared to previous models of prerequisite remediation. The present study employs qualitative methods to investigate methods of instruction at one community colleges to understand how instructors identify and respond to student needs. It concludes with recommendations for practice and highlights advantages of small format corequisite classes taught by the same instructor.
Confidence Intervals Of Covid-19 Vaccine Efficacy Rates, Frank Wang
Confidence Intervals Of Covid-19 Vaccine Efficacy Rates, Frank Wang
Numeracy
This tutorial uses publicly available data from drug makers and the Food and Drug Administration to guide learners to estimate the confidence intervals of COVID-19 vaccine efficacy rates with a Bayesian framework. Under the classical approach, there is no probability associated with a parameter, and the meaning of confidence intervals can be misconstrued by inexperienced students. With Bayesian statistics, one can find the posterior probability distribution of an unknown parameter, and state the probability of vaccine efficacy rate, which makes the communication of uncertainty more flexible. We use a hypothetical example and a real baseball example to guide readers to …
An Astronomer’S Journey Into Quantitative Reasoning, Jeffrey Bennett
An Astronomer’S Journey Into Quantitative Reasoning, Jeffrey Bennett
Numeracy
The University of Colorado Boulder campus introduced what may have been the world’s first quantitative reasoning (QR) requirement in 1984 and started offering a QR course in 1988. Although I am an astronomer by training, I had the privilege of creating and teaching that course, which led to my co-authorship of the first textbook directed specifically at QR courses. In this “Roots and Seeds” piece, I will discuss how this course and textbook came to be, how I as an astronomer ended up involved in it, and how this work has connected with other aspects of my career.
Using Covid-19 Vaccine Efficacy Data To Teach One-Sample Hypothesis Testing, Frank Wang
Using Covid-19 Vaccine Efficacy Data To Teach One-Sample Hypothesis Testing, Frank Wang
Numeracy
In late November 2020, there was a flurry of media coverage of two companies’ claims of 95% efficacy rates of newly developed COVID-19 vaccines, but information about the confidence interval was not reported. This paper presents a way of teaching the concept of hypothesis testing and the construction of confidence intervals using numbers announced by the drug makers Pfizer and Moderna publicized by the media. Instead of a two-sample test or more complicated statistical models, we use the elementary one-proportion z-test to analyze the data. The method is designed to be accessible for students who have only taken a …