Tuesday, February 26, 2008

No Pitchforks and Torches Yet

I survived giving my first official Forest Mensuration lecture. It was a lot of fun giving a nice little statistics review -- nothing too fancy, just measures of central tendency and dispersion. I tried to balance between chalkboard work and Powerpoint presentations to keep everyone as alert and interested as possible early in the morning. I certainly had to keep an elixir of courage with me -- a bit of iced coffee -- to keep me going, although I think my movements may've made a few of my students feel a bit dizzy. I still have a few more lectures to give on confidence intervals, calculating required sample sizes, and basic linear regressions. It's definitely a whole lot of work doing this but it's a refreshing blast of air for me, especially with that rated LB class sitting on me like a moldy sack of potatoes.

One of the most rewarding moments was an e-mail from a student of mine. She thanked me for actually going through how to calculate standard deviation by hand and explaining the different parts of the equation. I guess some of the students do have pulses at 0830 hrs!

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