CEDO 540 Stats - week 3

The new term we added this week that interested me was standard scores or Z-scores.  Here is a link to a good explanation of Z-Score , how it is calculated and how it can provide a meaningful way to compare data and understand how defective a process is.


Our group assignment will take a few weeks but I am eager to get started.  The assignment is to create a survey, administer it, collect the data, and then provide an analysis of the data using various statistical averages, calculations, and charts or graphs.  My group was deciding between using Survey Monkey and Google Forms.  Ultimately we decided to use Google Forms because of it's ability to share the collected data easily, we are all familiar with it and it is not limited to 10 questions like Survey Monkey.  Our topic will be Internet Safety and our targeted student groups will be grades 4 through 8.  We are expecting to see a difference between the knowledge of grades 4/5 and grades 6/7/8.  I will start administering the survey on Monday with my classes so we'll see what happens.

CEDO 540 - week 2

This week we talked about some more terminology and topics.  We talked about terms like census, sampling, opinion, marketing research, quantitative research, paid survey, and questionnaire.  It turns out that my memory was a little hazy when it came to defining these terms.  I had some basic understanding but there were some missing connections that I neglected to make.  It was good to review them.  I have to admit that I am still a little confused about skew.  I understand the creation of the "tail" when taking sets of numbers and deciding how the typical bell curve would look but I don't quite understand how to decide if its skewed to the left or right.


One of the main focuses this week was the survey.  We took a look at a website called Capterra that listed good survey resources, both online and offline software packages.  It might have a slight bias towards their "featured" survey tools but it still would be a good place to start when looking for survey options.  We were asked to review both free and paid survey services and analyze 3 of each.  We found that almost every online survey tool had a certain level of free features and then an option to upgrade by paying for some of the more powerful features.  Survey Monkey, Adobe FormsCentral, and Google Forms were my favorites.

CEDO 540 - Week 1 Stats and beyond

I really love stats.  From looking at sports stats and figuring out trends to analyzing the results of surveys I have really enjoyed working with statistics.  This first week was kind of an introduction to some basic terminology and we were to analyze a few scenarios as a group and then document the different situations and identify how stats were used.  I am very eager to delve deeper into the world of stats and come up with ways that I can use them to improve my teaching, training and even make improvements to my school.  There is a small part of me that is a little scared because I remember having a Stats class in high school that got really in-depth and I didn't do so well.  Hopefully I can handle it if we get that involved.