An educator I will be
Looks like I will be teaching this fall as a graduate teaching assistant. I was curious as to what they would have me do, and when I went to fill out the paperwork for my assistantship, I saw a form with my name filled out on it which detailed the nature of my assistantship: one of three boxes was checked which read, "teaching." Below that, the proportion of my assistantship which involved the aforementioned dutie(s) read, "100%."
So basically, I should be teaching at least 6 hours this fall. I would feel more comfortable teaching college algebra as I have been tutoring that for about two years now. I'm fairly new at this statistics business. Not to mention the fact that kids seem to understand plain jane algebra a little better than statistics. Since Mississippi State is paying 71% of my tuition, this beggar can't be a chooser.
So yes, I expect to be teaching two sections of statistics. I've seen how a few different professors teach it at MS State, and I'm starting to get a feel for what I will want to take a shot at. Yesterday, I was working with a student on his ST2113 (elementary stats) assignment which featured as its last question a question about the geometric distribution. I know I will try to teach them how the binomial distribution works. It's kind of fun to give them fancy shmancy terms like "probability mass function" (or acronym-crazy that we statisticians are: PMF).
In other news, I have started following the market again. There's a lot of talk of the housing market hitting a bottom. As I type this, oil is about $16 off its high. The market has been up nearly 500 points in two sessions (the last two in fact). Finally, the Dow Futures are up around 60 just on the brink of the market opening. Barring some horrible news (bad economic data, poor earnings, etc.), we should see another healthy session. For these reasons, I believe the recession might be coming to a close. I base this on roughly one year of arm chair financial analysis so take my "prediction" with a few truck loads of salt.
The financials are trading at 8 and 10 year lows so I have purchased about 7 or 8 of them (on my FAKE portfolio on Google). We'll see how it goes...maybe I'll enter an on-line market challenge or an investment club at State.
Well 21 minutes till the market opens, so bye for now.
So basically, I should be teaching at least 6 hours this fall. I would feel more comfortable teaching college algebra as I have been tutoring that for about two years now. I'm fairly new at this statistics business. Not to mention the fact that kids seem to understand plain jane algebra a little better than statistics. Since Mississippi State is paying 71% of my tuition, this beggar can't be a chooser.
So yes, I expect to be teaching two sections of statistics. I've seen how a few different professors teach it at MS State, and I'm starting to get a feel for what I will want to take a shot at. Yesterday, I was working with a student on his ST2113 (elementary stats) assignment which featured as its last question a question about the geometric distribution. I know I will try to teach them how the binomial distribution works. It's kind of fun to give them fancy shmancy terms like "probability mass function" (or acronym-crazy that we statisticians are: PMF).
In other news, I have started following the market again. There's a lot of talk of the housing market hitting a bottom. As I type this, oil is about $16 off its high. The market has been up nearly 500 points in two sessions (the last two in fact). Finally, the Dow Futures are up around 60 just on the brink of the market opening. Barring some horrible news (bad economic data, poor earnings, etc.), we should see another healthy session. For these reasons, I believe the recession might be coming to a close. I base this on roughly one year of arm chair financial analysis so take my "prediction" with a few truck loads of salt.
The financials are trading at 8 and 10 year lows so I have purchased about 7 or 8 of them (on my FAKE portfolio on Google). We'll see how it goes...maybe I'll enter an on-line market challenge or an investment club at State.
Well 21 minutes till the market opens, so bye for now.