Bonnie on college student reading skills

from the Headsprouts thread:

Reading comprehension is a huge problem for my college students. The introductory CS textbooks are written using vocabulary and a sentence complexity that is way beyond them. I wish I had a better sense of their actual reading skills so I could do some vocabulary work with them. The gasstationwithoupumps blog has posted links to some excellent material on teaching students how to read technical material that I think I may use next semester.

gasstationwithoutpumps on mean, median, & mode

re: what is an average, anyway?

Mean and median are both "measures of central tendency". They are ways of summarizing a large set of data in a quick way that simplifies the data and removes noise.

If you know that the average rent for office space is $4 a square foot, and you need 1000 square feet per person, then you can quickly judge whether you can afford an office for your staff, without having to go through hundreds of real-estate listings. Of course, you also need to know something about the variance, and not just the mean, as there may be a few not-so-nice places that are much cheaper than average.

 gastationwithoutpumps