Day 18 (July 7, 2010)

"Interesting." "Encouraging." Those words were John's reaction to our presentation about predicting the work load the Engineering Effects department will be experiencing in the future. Our next steps are to figure our how to recreate the data John originally shared with us. That will be taking data from a huge database and summarizing it down into smaller categories. Now we are just waiting to gain access to the database.

One of my focuses today was to figure out how this job can be translated into the classroom. The obvious answer is to bring the data that we have been looking for the regression lines and give the students real-life data to our curriculum. The less obvious answer is to create some type of activity can be used to simulate the data which can then be used to practice analyzing "less than obvious" data.

My initial thought was to assign each student a certain number of dice and a criteria they must role to "finish" the job. They must count the number rolls needed to finish the job. Students will be randomly assigned how many dice to roll (rolling 1 die, 2 dice or 3 dice), their "ability" to complete the job, and how many jobs they must complete. Their ability will be based on having different probabilities of completing the job. For example, a 1 die rolling student must roll an even to complete the job, while another student rolling a single die must roll a 6 to complete the job. The "even" student is simulated to have more ability that the "6" student.

Other ideas Ryan brainstormed with me was using real Major league data and determine how many at bats did it take for each player to get their first hit (or first 10 hits or the like) and compare those results to their batting averages. Another was to have a list of words and give the student different rules to follow. i.e count the number of words that alphabetically come before M and how many after vs. determine if the word is a commonly used word or not. After them hearing the list and following their rule, have them try to recreate the list. One rule will typically be much more accurate than the other.