Framing Our Reading, Part 3

https://blog.minitab.com/blog/the-statistics-game/moneyball-shows-the-power-of-statistics?fbclid=IwAR0uSn-MQYuBwGcKjFJnS-YQeCQK6kQaXgNqG1_Rypn6GXJCD9U3yEUN8cY

This week, Susan, Courtney, and I stuck with Statistics in finding an article on the Oakland A’s and Moneyball. This article talks about how Billy Beane used sabermetrics to change the way data analytics and statistics were used in the MLB. The article breaks down an example of a 1-Proportion Test and proves that Billy Beane’s statistical analysis was actually very accurate. This article also hits the three components of text complexity, qualitative, quantitative, and the reader and the task (Burke). The qualitative aspect of the article is that is furthers the students understanding of the topic of statistical testing and analysis. The quantitative aspect is that the text is appropriate and at the reading level of high school AP seniors. The reader and the task aspect is that the students will have prior knowledge to this information because the article is an extension to the lesson to show how these tests are used in the real world.

As the reader, this article packs in lot of information. It gives important definitions for different components that are calculated in a 1-Proportion Test and what each element means in terms of the problem. One of the important things that I found in this article was the meaning behind the p-value. Another important thing that I found in this article were the images of the tests because it gives each piece that is used to calculate the statistics. I also found that the article highlighting the percentage of the Oakland A’s winning 20 consecutive games and how it was calculated is important, as well. The quote that stuck out to me was when the article was referenced the trade of Pena and Giambi,

Pena and Giambi were traded at the end of May, when the A’s record was 20-26. Oakland went 83-33 the rest of the season. By the looks of it, these trades helped!

This was a shock when I was reading because it was just proof that the numbers don’t lie, and Billy Beane was on to something with his statistical analysis. Some of the key words in this article are p-value, significant, binomial distribution, and 1-Proportion Test. These words are key vocabulary words in the probability unit that are needed to be familiar with in order to grasp the data that is being explained in the article and how the numbers came about to form conclusions.

There are many important pieces to this article I found as I read. I was able to relate to the article because it was from a relevant movie of a sport that I know, baseball. It also gave an example of how statistics is used in the real world and how it is such an important aspect of the sports. The calculator images of the components of a 1-Proportion Test and a binomial distribution lend to where each piece of the calculation comes from and how to interpret their meanings. Importantly, this article explains how to find probability for consecutive wins, so the reader can get a better image of the importance of statistics and how it helped the A’s turn out a better record than before and save millions. The message this reading gave to me was that statistics is an asset to not just the game of baseball, but to many other sports and aspects of real life.

As the teacher, I found that this sports article is packed with good information that statistics students will see throughout the year. The key concepts of how 1-Proportion Tests can be used outside of the classroom and how it has benefitted a larger organization are important in showing students possible future career paths they could take that use what we are actually learning in class. The images and break down of the tests and how to interpret the results are most important in this article. In order for students to grasp those concepts, they need to know some background on the process if running a 1-Proportion Test and a binomial distribution. This will enable students in understanding the meaning of the article. The perspective of this article is straight forward, informational, and potentially pro Oakland. The author does a good job of adding in a little humor to the article with some side comments, such as “… to find the answer I could multiple .636 by itself 20 times….ooooooooor I could be lazy and have Minitab do it. I’m going to go with lazy”. This may seem to give mixed messages to students, but a lot of statistical analysis is done on some type of calculator that is programmed to spit out an answer given the right information, so I took this as students can see that there are resources out there that can make their lives easier. The author’s purpose of this was to demonstrate that there are applications where this type of test can be used and how it is important, so when a student asks, “when am I ever going to use this?”, you can respond “when you become a baseball statistical analyst.” In addition to this article having a good mix of unit vocabulary and being about a relatable subject matter, it is short, so student engagement and attention should not be lost. I also found that this article went well with a few standards that I covered in Statistics this year. Some of the standards this article covers are,

·       ~ S.IC.1 – Understand statistics as a process for making inferences about population parameters based on a random sample from that population

·       ~ S.IC.6 – Evaluate reports based on data

·       ~ S.CP.2 – Understand that two events A and B are independent if the probability of A and B occurring together is the product of their probabilities and use this characterization to determine if they are independent

·        ~ S.IC.4 – Use data from a sample survey to estimate a population mean or proportion

These standards are found in almost every unit of a Statistics course, which make this article a good fit for my classes.

In determining a strategy to use for this article, my group chose paired summarizing. “Paired summarizing provides a format for two students to work together to express their understandings and summarize narrative or informational text” (McLaughlin, 2015). I will begin this by explaining to students how to summarize and identify essential information. Then I would demonstrate by showing the students a short paragraph and model identifying key information, so they know what types of things to look for in this article. Once students know what is expected and what to do, then I allow students to work with a partner and guide them into paired questioning. They will read the article independently and summarize on their own, then they will compare and contrast their summaries with one another. As the teacher, I will be encouraging them to ask questions on what one another has summarized and what information they thought to be important. At the end, we would come together as a class to come up with one class summary.  This strategy would be effective for my students because it allows them to compare viewpoints on what others think is important in reading. It also helps them to learn how to identify key information apart from information that may be filler or unnecessary in identifying the message.

References

Burke, B. A Close Look at Close Reading.

McLaughlin, M. (2015). Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness. Pearson Education

Framing Out Reading, Part 2

This week, Courtney, Susan, and I chose an article on the Patriots titled No, CBS Sports, the Patriots Have not Found an Edge on Coin Flips by Harrison Chase. We picked this article because it gives a real-world example of finding the probability of multiple independent events occurring. It has a good mix of vocabulary from the probability unit and has some rare words as well. The article came from a sports blog called Harvard Sports Analysis, which we found by doing a Google search.

As the reader, I found this text to aid in the understanding of how to find the probability of multiple independent events. The most significant parts of this text were the breakdown of the probability of the Patriots winning 19 of 25 coin tosses, the probability that at least one team in the NFL can achieve this, and the probability of this not happening at all. The quotation that stuck out to me the most was,

Even if you restricted it to not all results as extreme in either direction but just results of 19 or greater, the probability of one or more teams achieving that is still nearly 20%.

This quote stuck with me as I read the article because as I thought about the probability of continuously winning a coin flip over 50% of the time, I thought that that percentage was somewhat higher than expected. Some of the words that are important were probability, independent, simulation, and significant. These words are important to know the definition and their meaning in statistics to understand the breakdown of the data being presented in the article.

In teaching the students using this text, students need to know vocabulary and process of finding the probability of multiple independent events. If events are independent, they need to know to multiple each probability of each separate success of an event together. In this case, they need to know the probability of a coin toss. The background that they would be given for this would be an exploration in simulating a coin toss. When I introduce this concept to students, we do labs with coin toss and dice roll to see that none of the events depend on the outcome of one another and they are they are separate and independent. The meaning behind this article is not a complex one. It takes students through finding the probability of winning and losing multiple coin tosses for one team and across multiple teams. The author shares some of his biases in supporting the Patriots with statements such as, “clearly with Deflategate out of the way the media is looking for something else to accuse the Patriots of” and “both common sense and statistics will tell you that the Patriots have not been cheating by winning coin flips at an ‘impossible’ rate”. Though it is from his point of view, it does not change the mathematics presented. The article also flows well with going through the probability of the Patriots winning 19 out of 25 coin flips, winning fewer than 6 coin flips, at least one team having a record of 19 out of 25 flip wins out of 32 teams, and the probability of one or more teams achieving that coin flip record. The author also makes these comparisons to prove his point that the Patriots are not cheating during coin flips. This sports article is used to support the Patriots against media criticism for cheating at another aspect of football and gives a breakdown of the math to support the case.

The strategy I am using for this article is paired questioning. “In Paired Questioning, students engage in actively generating questions during reading” (McLaughlin, 2015). I would integrate this strategy into my lesson using this article by doing 5 steps, explain, demonstrate, guide, practice, and reflect. I would explain paired questioning to them and how the activity is going to flow with the student and their pair generating questions to one another, taking turns asking and answering. I would demonstrate this explanation with them using an example from a previous reading we had done in class. Because the article is not separated into sections, I would have the students look at the first three paragraphs, then the paragraph 4, then paragraphs 5 and 6. Once the students have read the three sections, engaging in paired questioning at the end of each one, I would have them look at the article as a whole and have them state their opinions and knowledge from what they were able to grasp from the article. At the end, the class would reflect on our opinions and understandings of the text.

I think that this article, though short, is a good break down on how probability is used to analyze sports. It incorporates vocabulary from the unit and calculations learned. It has a good mix of vocabulary and biases from the author, who seems to be in support of the Patriots. Each student can form their opinion on whether they think the Patriots are “cheaters” based on their understanding of the article and their view on the Patriots outside of the article. I think this article can strike controversy amongst classmates based on who their favorite NFL team.

References

McLaughlin, M. (2015). Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Chase, H. (2015, November 5). No, CBS Sports, the Patriots have not found an edge on coin flips. Retrieved from http://harvardsportsanalysis.org/2015/11/nocbs/?fbclid=IwAR1PyAfLz1qT0efdRRWW5W7AQz6lvR-bB6GurcBNWDVMYcycfEO6WCcGqe0

Framing Our Reading, Part 1

Article Title: Wait, Have We Really Wiped Out 60 Percent of Animals?

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/10/have-we-really-killed-60-percent-animals-1970/574549/?fbclid=IwAR1xibxi_Bm6E3f6dnWyU5kztF04GjldgC7xtmWNgVYrc4I3ZvBacrBp79U

For this week’s article, Courtney and I chose to go with an article about animal extinction statistics. We chose this article because it gives examples of false data leading to inaccurate conclusions and bias. We found this text by picking article topics that we think our students would find interesting, such as animals and extinction. The article also did not have an overwhelming amount of complex or rare words and had vocabulary that is found in the unit of introducing statistics and probability. The article comes from a reputable source called The Atlantic, which has a variety of interesting engaging articles.

When reading this article, I found many key elements that were significant to the lesson and to understanding the author’s message. Some things that I found to be most significant for the lesson was bias between animals that are studied more than others, how statistics of a small sample can skew the big picture, and how statistics can be misleading. Bias, the hinderance of smaller sample sizes, and misleading statistics were shown through examples of how animals that are studied more have more data and animals that are studies less have less data, so to get their true population numbers for those species that there is not as much known is more difficult. So, to say that in the past 40 years, 60% of animals have been wiped out is not totally accurate. With this, a quote that stuck out to me was,

Since prehistory, humans have killed off so many species of mammals that it would take 3 million to 7 million years of evolution for them to evolve an equivalent amount of diversity.

This alarming statement made me think about mammals, such as the sabretooth tiger and the woolly mammoth. These animals were said to have been driven to by hunters and global warming, but there is only so much to support these theories that no one is 100% certain how they disappeared. Having variability with humans destroying animal habitats, hunting, and polluting the environment may have played a role in diminishing populations, but climate changes and other environmental elements have played a role too, which is not highlighted as heavily as human intervention. In addition, words and phrases, such as “estimated the size of different animal populations”, percent, biases, data, and “It is not a census of all wildlife but reports how wildlife populations have changed in size” all contain vocabulary and verbiage that students would see throughout a statistics course and in the first unit.

In using this text to teach students, key information in this article have to do with the variability in collecting data, sample sizes, bias, and false statistics. The background needed for this would be examples of how to spot bad data and vocabulary on words like census and biases. I believe that this text has some a few levels of meaning, such as how people can interpret statistics, how statistics does not always paint an accurate big picture, and how bias can change the meaning of statistics and messages. I feel that the overall article, however, shows one main perspective that can be possibly seen as biased based on person beliefs about the human contribution to animal extinction. This article is written in the point of view of the author and their opinion on how certain data can be misleading. You could form an opposition to the article if you are a firm supporter of human intervention causing extinction. The text does have a good, easy transition from one idea to the next and is clean in relaying information to the reader. The author refers to reports from WWF, The Guardian, and Living Planet Index. This article also has straight forward concepts and is more informational, bringing awareness to how data can be misinterpreted. The language is for a level of ability who is not familiar with how to dissect a text that contains data and how it can be misconstrued. The author is trying to convey that the statistic of saying that over the last 40 years or so that 60% of animal species have been wiped out is not totally accurate because not all variables have been accounted for in the study. This text is well organized, and I see it being a good introductory article to how statistics can be misleading.

I think that this article would be useful in making connections between real world current events and what we would be learning in class with bad data and bias. The lesson with this article would start with a recap of what bias looks like and how to determine bad data. Each student would read the article individually highlighting information that demonstrated bias and bad data and what they found interesting. After they highlighted, they would then determine the author’s message and meaning of the article. The students would then come together with a partner and participate in a think-pair-share, where they can compare the information they found to demonstrate bias and bad data, and what they took away from the article. To wrap up the class, we would come together as a class and reflect on each group’s findings and compare our opinions and thoughts on the article.

I think that this article is a good way to ease students into statistics. It allows them to see how bias and bad data can be found in real world current event. It can allow the students to form their own opinions on a text and presents an interesting topic of animal extinction. I think that with this text students can get a good understanding of bias and how data can be misconstrued.