Diversity in Mathematics

By Jon OaksSep 28, 2013
Diversity in Mathematics Diversity is a topic that is near and dear to my heart.  As a Korean kid in a primarily white neighborhood and surrounded by primarily white family and friends, I was often bullied.  Although, I’m sure it didn’t help that I was overweight as a child, but that’s a different story.  I know my parents tried their best to make sure that I felt included and whatnot, but I always felt racism and racial undertones a lot as kid, in school, in church, and pretty much everywhere I went on a daily basis.  To me, that’s not…
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The Mathematics of Weight Loss

By Jon OaksSep 01, 2013
The picture below was taken in college when I was around my heaviest weight ever of 314 lbs.  I've always been a big person and I there is a lot that goes into why this is the case as well.  Was it the way I was raised?  Was it genetics?  Was it just me eating myself into a hole?  Well, this is not the place where I'm going to talk about that. What I will say, though, is that this is the most recent picture of me a little over 70 lbs lighter than I was at my highest weight.…
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New Probability Assignment

By Jon OaksFeb 20, 2013
Last week I posted this on twitter after I attended the Math In Action Conference at Grand Valley State University: However, I couldn't post the assignment online right away as I hadn't given it out to my students at that point.  Now I can.  Although I had lots of student questions about the assignment (more than I do a 'normal' assignment), I could tell that this problem had the students think outside of the box more than they would have had I not given them this assignment at all. I tried to manage the student questions by starting a discussion…
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Mind Maps for Calculus, Algebra, and Statistics

By Jon OaksSep 10, 2012
This semester I decided that I wanted to organize all of the resources that I've found on the Internet onto Mind Maps for my Calculus, Algebra, and Statistics classes.  There was just too much that I wanted to tell my students about every semester that it started to become too overwhelming to repost the links on my LMS every semester (my courses don't ever seem to copy very well from semester to semester).  The results are below.  Feel free to share with everyone. For the calculus map, bit.ly/calcmap For the algebra map, bit.ly/algebramap For the statistics map, bit.ly/statmap    
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Guessing Ages Activity

By Jon OaksMay 20, 2012
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 in small groups to guess the ages of people and it gave me a chance to briefly review how to find the mean with students, a concept that they should already know from Pre-Algebra class.  Of course, later on in the class we talk about…
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Teaching Control Charts

By Jon OaksMay 18, 2012
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 notice, and even harder to get them in two specific colors.  I ended up going to the dollar store and buying the gemstones that people generally put in vases or in the garden.  The gemstones are sold in bags that are 14oz, but I can…
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