Dear Friends —
I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy, and getting by despite the difficulty of these times. For today’s email, I’d like to share a few new resources that you may find of interest:
Article: “Would You Trust a 90% Accurate Antibody Test? (You Shouldn’t!)”
Suppose you get tested for Covid-19 antibodies with a “90% accurate” test and your test comes up positive. Should you feel 90% confident that you really have the antibodies? Most people are very surprised to learn that, in fact, it’s much more likely that your test result is a false positive than a true positive in this case. I explain why in my new post on Medium, direct link: https://link.medium.com/tKOEegVKX5.
Note: For those teaching mathematics, below the main article you will find a section of “mathematical details” that you could use to create class activities.
Video Presentations: Over the past week, I’ve done three virtual presentations that might be of particular interest to K-12 teachers:
- The Scale of the Universe (14 minutes): A brief overview of size scales from our solar system outward. Posted by the International Dark Sky Association at https://youtu.be/43G4kqxX6Qg.
- Story Time From Space (~1 hour): A brief overview of the Story Time From Space program, followed by Q&A with teachers for the virtual Elementary STEM CON 2020. Posted at https://youtu.be/WH023_eOnb0.
- I, Humanity (42 minutes): A “live” virtual reading of my book for the International Dark Sky Association, posted at https://youtu.be/sPGyeGyv6cY.
Middle School Earth and Space Science: We are continuing to post new material to our in-progress, FREE digital curriculum at Grade8science.com. Chapter 3 is now fully posted, and parts of Chapter 4 are also up. (There will be 8 chapters total.) Please check it out, and please send me feedback on whether you think the project is worth continuing.
As always, feel free to reply to me directly with any questions or comments, and to share this email with others. Subscribe/unsubscribe instructions are below.
Best wishes,
Jeff