The Full Monty

Last Friday I gave a presentation that I had been rather excited about. After seeing kids shoot dice incessantly, I decided that I'd do a talk on probability. I hoped that when I had finished, everyone would understand dice and never want to play the lottery. I planned for the talk to go for about fifteen minutes, and I think that I finally had my timing down. As dictated by Moore's Law, Molly was out sick and I was suddenly faced with the class all by myself.

The beginning the class went much like most classes did when run by Molly. We covered the starter, answers, and went over the homework. However the students were terrifically more difficult to settle down. Several refused to pay attention and found that they liked wandering around the classroom better. I always had pity for substitute teachers, but I must say that this reinforced that sympathy by a few orders of magnitude. I tried reprimanding the worst students, but waiting quietly until everyone realized I had stopped talking seemed to have a more profound effect. In particular I was grateful to the several students that actually took to encouraging their classmates to pay attention. I had the pleasure of stopping a near fight, and by the time class had ended I was completely worn out.

Before beginning the talk I gave the students their homework and asked that they either follow the talk or quietly complete their homework. Another TF had tried something similar with his class and it seemed to work very well. I forgot that in his case he had physically separated the two groups of students, in my case I left them in their seats which was a bit disconcerting. Disappointingly few seemed to care about what I had to say with only about 3 in each class giving the talk much thought.

The presentation began with an explanation of probability and a simple example, then moved on to the slightly more complex case of two die (including a quick MATLAB simulation). Afterward, I explained independent probability and showed how the odds for the lottery were calculated. Then I presented an oddly morbid list of things more likely than winning the lottery, and ended with the Monty Hall problem. This presentation was deliberately shorter and less complicated than my previous ones. I had very little writing on the slides, and made an effort to reserve them for visualizing the talk. In that sense, the lecture went much more smoothly than before. The Monty Hall problem was particularly fascinating for the students, though by the time I got to it most of the students had tuned out or settled in on their homework. I probably would have been better served by starting with it instead of ending with it.

While I have tried to aid Molly in meting out reprimands, I did not have the authority or the mental preparation to go it alone. After suffering through the question dozens of times I can understand her impatience with students asking to use the bathroom (though I still believe the school policy of locking them during lunch hours is absurd). The presentation also likely suffered from not being directly related to the class material, but I had made the decision to consciously break from it. In the past having to track the curriculum with my presentations always felt rather limiting and I saw a chance to try something different. In any case, I intend on doing one more presentation on my final day at the end of this month. The subject will still be somewhat distinct from class lessons, but I hope to use some of the other lessons from Friday to better inform this one.

See below for the presentation and MATLAB code:
Presentation
Dice Code