Jon Oaks

Author: Jon Oaks

  • Learning from Ignite

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    If you don’t know what Ignite is, simply put, it is a format in which speakers are limited to using 20 slides and each of those slides automatically advances every 15 seconds.  Thus, a speaker must get their point across within a maximum of 5 minutes. I learned about the Ignite format from past conferences…

  • My First Commencement

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    This May I attended my first ever commencement as a faculty member.  I really didn’t know what to expect.  People I know who teach at other colleges told me to expect two things – that it would be a very enjoyable experience to see so many students walk across the stage and that it would…

  • My Thoughts on Teaching Everyday Math

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    This semester I had the pleasure of teaching a fairly new course at my college called, “Everyday Math.”  The class consists of several major units: Management Sciences (Graph Theory) The Science of Data (Statistics and Probability) Voting and Social Choice Fairness and Game Theory The Digital Revolution (Cryptography) Your Money and Resources (Interest) At the…

  • Career Day at the Ballpark

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    On Thursday, May 17, I had the displeasure of being at Comerica Park for Career Day at the Ballpark.  I can honestly say that if I would have known it was Career Day (shame on me for not checking), I would have exchanged my ticket for another game. When I got to the game, there…

  • Summer Plans 2012

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    So, this is my annual post where I organize my thoughts on what I need to get done before the end of this summer.  If I recall, last summer my plans fell into 5 categories.  I will try to sort my thoughts for this summer in a similar manner. 1.   Conferences:  This summer the conferences…

  • Guessing Ages Activity

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    This semester I tried a Guessing Ages Activity as a first day activity in my statistics classes.  My version of the activity is adapted from page 11 of Teaching Statistics: A Bag of Tricks.  I found this activity to be a good ice breaker for the first day of class.  The students really enjoyed working…

  • 1.653*Pi Day

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    Happy 1.653*Pi (5/19) Day!   Yes, I know that Pi Day was way back on 3/14 and that 2*Pi Day is coming up on 6/28.   But celebrating 1.653*Pi Day is a little more fun, don’t you think?  Here are few resources that you may be able to use in your classroom: Pi Day Activity…

  • Justin Verlander’s One Hitter

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    Warning:  I don’t normally write about baseball.  But you can’t deny that being at Justin Verlander’s One Hitter game is something special. I have to admit that I went into this game not expecting much from the Detroit Tigers.  The Tigers should have been able to sweep the Twins and they didn’t.  Villarreal shouldn’t have…

  • My Search for a New Laptop

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    This week I bought a new laptop.  My search came down to the final three.  I ended up buying the Toshiba, but I thought it might be helpful to others to post the thoughts that went through my mind while picking between the three, as well as the specs on each of the machines from…

  • Teaching Control Charts

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    The other day in my statistics class, I talked about Control Charts.  I really wanted to drive home the point about the difference between individual runs charts and control charts.  So, I did a version of Deming’s Experiment with my students. First of all, it was very difficult to get 1,000 marbles on very short…