Running to stand still

Well, after a few hours in the office on this glorious Saturday morning, I'm ready for Monday's class, and nearly so for Wednesday. The project proposal guidelines are posted, as is the matrix multiplication activity on deck for Monday. I think that should go well.

I'm satisfied with how class went on Friday (yesterday), although I'd be eager to know how the students felt about it. (Post away, people!)

As planned, we spent the first few minutes involved in the team portion of the first two-part quiz. (We had a late start due to some people who straggled in after class began.) That out of the way, we did some brainstorming on properties of vectors and affiliated formulas, and then we looked at vectors in their natural habitats (PowerPoint slides available here). The RGB vectors went over pretty well, and I think folks got the hang of it rather easily. We didn't have as much time as I would have liked to tackle chemical equations, and I'll be passing out a brief handout on that topic taken from David C. Lay's text Linear algebra and its applications on Monday.

All in all, vectors being review for most of the people in the class, I don't think it went poorly. Monday's activity (renewed analysis of the opening day's Markov Dance) is a bit more structured, and should get the gears turning on matrix multiplication.