Statistics Liberal Arts MathPasadena City College

Motivation & History

Current Curriculum

CALCULUS

Does the curriculum serve our population?

Create a new track for SLAM

Completion

Backwards DesignWhat math does a SLAM student need?

Statistics

Liberal Arts Math

Real Life

QuantitativeLiteracy 2

QuantitativeLiteracy 1

SLAM vs. STEM

Quantitative Literacy

1

Quantitative Literacy 2

Statistics

Liberal Arts Math

Beginning Algebra

Intermediate Algebra STEM Track

Creating Learning Experiences

• Discovery-based activities

• Using Manipulatives to understand mathematical ideas

• Excel Labs to both explore concepts and analyze data

• Projects – Tracking Expenses– Stock Project– Home Buying Project

Created our own course materials

QL2: Course Content

Statistics

• Measures of Center and Weighted Mean

• Measuring Spread

• Graphical Representations of Data

• Correlation and Estimating the Best-fit Line

Finance

• Simple vs Compound Interest• Payday Loans• Credit Cards• Annuities• Amortized Loans

• Student Loans

• Home Loans

Probability

• Events, Simple Events, Combining sets

• Counting – Fundamental Counting Principle, nPr, nCr

• Two Way Frequency Tables

• Expected Value

Geometry

• Areas of Rectangles, Triangles, Parallelograms, and Trapezoids discovery-based activity

• Investigating the effects on Perimeter, Area, and Volume when changing edge length

• Fermi Problem (estimation)

Fermi Problem

Science

• Solving Literal Equations

• Units and Dimensional Analysis

• Absolute vs Percent Error

• Linear, Exponential, and Logarithmic functions & rates of growth

• Scientific Notation and Sig Figs

• Variation

Standard Algebra Content Excluded

Factoring Quadratics &Polynomials

Rational Expressions

Matrices &Linear Systems

QL1: Content andApproach

Similar Content to a Standard Prealgebra class (but better)

Old and out of date New and hot!

Content• Patterns

• Integers

• Fractions

• Decimals

• Percent

• Graphing and Lines

Contextualized

Experiential/Activity-based

Less lecturing More of students doing math

Lots of Manipulatives

24

Solving Word ProblemsEveryday

25

Discovery-basedLearning

26

Metacognition andAffective Domain

27

Critical Thinking

Student Comments “This thing is hard, but I love it!”

“It seems like I’m learning the same stuff in a regular class, but I actually see how it’s useful.”

“I’m SOOOOO glad that PCC has finally realized that we are all individuals and that we learn differently.”

“This is more than math, this is real life!”

“F**K ME, I GOT IT!!!”