The Doc Is In

“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “to speak of many things.”

Archive for August 12th, 2008

Be Wary Of Statistics

Posted by drpezz on August 12, 2008

While watching the Olympic recap this morning, the sportscaster mentioned that the U.S. men’s basketball team struggled shooting the 3-point shot. I punched up the box score for the game, and, sure enough, the team did struggle making only 5 of 21 shots (23.8%). Then I looked at the individual player shooting percentages and saw that Kobe Bryant made 0 of his 8 3-pointers, which means the rest of the team made 5 of 13 (38.5%). This is close to the average of 40% that all teams average. In reality, one player shot rather poorly while the rest of the team shot at an average clip.

This reminded me of an attendance presentation given to our staff last year. We were being given a long, long lecture about our inability to take attendance and were threatened with returning to a more labor intensive method of attendance submission. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Administration, Attendance | 3 Comments »

How Does That Work?

Posted by drpezz on August 12, 2008

Last year I spoke with a teacher just before the start of the school year who said to me with a large, toothy smile, “I’m all done!”

I replied, “all done with what?” Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Lessons | 2 Comments »