Regression: My "Past Life" as an Engineer
(Room California)
29 Jun 16
6:00 PM
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7:15 PM
The real world is messy and many feel under-equipped to make sense of the onslaught of data. Among its positive changes, the Common Core revamping of mathematics education introduces certain statistical concepts including linear regression early in the secondary school curriculum, much earlier than before where it was even previously required at all. The integrative approach, made possible by the introduction of graphing calculators and computer software into the classroom, creates an appreciation of a good linear fit prior to the formal understanding of relations and functions. The talk will be partly from the speaker's perspective as a post-secondary educator on the placement of regression within mathematical curriculum, as the topic applies to different career and degree pathways, and partly a practical explanation of regression – introducing the concepts with comfortable visualizations and a modicum of the necessary formulae for linear least squares regression. As time permits, the talk is entirely likely to go nonlinear.