Continuing Basic Maths Revision
I previously wrote that I am in the process of (quickly) going through the Teaching Company series High School Level—Basic Math as a form of revision. I have completed lectures 17 and 18. I might go through them again because I wasn’t fully concentrating.
I am using SlimTimer to keep a record of my activities but I’m not sure that I like this program that much. You see, I remembered that I had gone through a lecture the other day (but couldn’t record it at the time because the program wasn’t working properly) and wanted to add it at a later point but I am not sure it has properly been recorded as a completed task. It’s hard to tell. Also, I am doing separate tasks, all with a similar title but separate details, titled “Listen to Lecture”, every time I listen to a separate lecture. But I think that when I look at a summary the program sees them all as the same task rather than each being a separate task. And another thing, by pausing the task and starting it again, the program appears to record it as one task finishing and a new one is beginning when it should really be just the one task. The first picture below shows how a single session with several pauses has been recorded as several separate tasks (the bottom three rows). The one below that shows that the summary for the day is one long task rather than the two separate tasks I that intended – Listen to Lecture (Lecture 17) and Listen to Lecture (Lecture 18) (see the row for 27/6/2007).
Making a Start on a New Series
I started Meaning from Data: Statistics Made Clear today. Like most introductory lectures, there wasn’t anything too specific to remember. So far I’ve learnt that the two main purposes of statistics are to (1) describe or summarise a complete set of data to give it meaning and (2) to infer from a sample of a group the characteristics of the complete group. I’ve summarised these two main concepts using Photoshop below. Put simply, statistics involves giving meaning to otherwise meaningless data.
I am going to go back to the ‘Course Guidebook’ now and ‘revise’. I say ‘revise’ because there isn’t too much information to process (yet), but in later lectures it will be beneficial. Also, I’ll use my old textbook Introduction to the Practice of Statistics, Second Edition, whenever it’s helpful to do so. I was going to simultaneously do the Online Video Course ‘Against All Odds: Inside Statistics‘ but it appears that copyright restrictions prevent me viewing this material here in Australia.
More progress…
I am making progress through the High School Level—Basic Math course of lectures. It’s very basic stuff but I still have trouble following some of the problems because I have been conditioned in using different techniques. The lecture I just completed was ‘Exponents and the Order of Operations’, but the stuff that I really want to get to is the Geometry, Algebra and Statistics lectures. I can’t skip straight to them though because I’ll feel better going through the earlier lectures just in case there is something I’ve forgotten and needs to be recalled. It’s pretty time consuming though and I’m not really learning much new (or remembering things that I had forgotten.)
Yay!
I finally completed the lecture series High School Level—Chemistry. I understood everything presented but had a minor problem with the solubility equilibria problems in the last lecture because I couldn’t recall how to rearrange the equations to find an unknown i.e. problems that were essentially mathematical in nature. Other than that, I deepened my understanding of basic chemistry and general problem solving. In high school, and during the first year of my science degree, I rote learned pretty much everything, but these lecturers presented the subject matter in such a way that I began to ‘intrinsically’ appreciate each of the variables such as mass, moles and molarity. This made problem solving far more intuitive. The lecturer, Frank Cardulla, is a brilliant teacher.
Revising High School
I am revising some of my high school chemistry and basic maths by doing the Teaching Company courses High School Level—Basic Math and High School Level—Chemistry. I am about one-third to a half way through them both. I won’t blog on them because I am going through them fairly fast and probably don’t need to remember everything. I did the lectures on multiplying decimals before and have already forgotten the exact details, but I do hope that I am prompted to recall the broader concepts in greater detail. Plus, I can always go back over the parts that I have forgotten, should I need to. I am going to do Meaning from Data: Statistics Made Clear next and I want to put much more effort into understanding that subject (I did introductory statistics at university, but never fully appreciated the subject, and want to now come to a better understanding, and a fuller appreciation, of it.)
Representing Arguments
After completing the Teaching Company series Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning (which I recommend) I learnt to diagram arguments as follows:
However, after purchasing the program Rationale (which I also recommend) I learnt to diagram arguments in this way:
I have combined them in this manner:
As you can see, the evidence forms one premise and the warrant forms another. The evidence and warrant are claims in themselves and can be supported by supplementary arguments.
Obviously these diagrams are not comprehensive, as there are many co-premises in any argument that are unlikely to ever me disputed (such as ’cause precedes effect’, ‘the world is real and intelligible’ etc.)
If both parties to a dispute agree with the basic framework of the argument, though, unnecessary argument can be avoided.
Another post…
I bought an iriver X20 4 GB model the other day from JB Hi-Fi in Epping. I like it so far. I have converted six lectures from the Teaching Company series Great World Religions: Islam. So far I have watched the first lecture. I am going through the booklet and might write something here and there on Islam as the series progresses. Or maybe I won’t. I just feel the need to do something after listening to each lecture.
And for one last link, I watched the first, and intend to watch the rest, at the Fitness First gym in Epping.
