10/24/2008

Emails from College

[mom]"Timmy, email me immediately. I'm not going to pass these GACE exams tomorrow. What made me think I could learn algebra I and II, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, statistics, and mathematical processes in three weeks of spare time? I have no spare time, I am too busy quilting. Do you know a device for remembering what "mean, median, and mode" are? Help your mother. Love you."

[son]"Mom, you've had two months to study [three weeks, two months, who's counting]. You're just nervous. It will all come back to you. This is what Col. Sider used to tell me to do during a test: look up at the ceiling [I thought he was going to say 'look for the answer in the pattern of the styrofoam dots']. This makes blood rush to the back of your head, which is where short-term memory lives. Can't help with mean/median/mode, Mom, Mrs. Miller drilled those into me such that I will remember them for the rest of my life whether I want to or not."

So I thought of my own devices: average and mean both have "a" and "e" in them, picture median as a line down the middle, and mode and often both have "o"s in them. And I'll be looking up at the ceiling a lot in those exams tomorrow, probably with tears running into my ears.

4 comments:

Quiltbirdie said...

The way to remember "mode" is that it sort of sounds like "most" and that's what it means, basically.

I guess that's an okay device because I can remember it from junior high!

Can't help you with the other two.

MARCIE said...

Karen, I hope you did OK on that test. Oh the horrors of it! Hurry back to your quilting where it is safe from the likes of mean, median and mode, whatever that is!

TestPrep said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
meggie said...

I love your pics of the cats- Ginger is very very handsome. Rembrandt is really a patchy little girl! I keep wanting for a cat, but NO says Gom!