Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Technology Tuesday, Flabrats

This is really about statistics, but this is such a fundamental idea, I wanted to write about it and link to these fantastic videos.  It can be used to test the effectiveness of a technology, so I'm posting it to Technology Tuesday (TT).

My daughter's high school honors Chemistry class also started with this lesson, but using pennies.  My Berkeley honors Chemistry class's laboratory portion also started with this lesson and pennies.  Remember when I took PH207x and wrote about the experience?  You can now take the archived course and watch these videos in context.

Iris said that she wasn't good at Chemistry because she had difficulty with this lab.  Her teacher says that this is a very difficult concept and Iris understood it better than any other kid in the class.  Still, it takes a few times for this lesson to sink in and it helps to revisit it periodically and to see different applications of the concept.

I'm also hoping that my daughter reads these posts and watches them.  The flabrats are sooo cute--internet meme cute.  Perhaps we can start an internet meme using flabrats?

The first video introduces flabrats, lab rats fed a diet that makes them much heavier than your average labrat.


What happens when a lab rat gets loose in the building?  Is it a flabrat or a labrat from another lab?  How do you classify when you don't know the true answer?  With statistics!

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