[nabs-l] AP Economics - Please Help if you have experience

[Kaiti Shelton]

Hi Miso,

I haven't taken econ, but I'm taking Stats this semester and my
teacher and I have done a lot with adapting graphs and turning around
qquestions to make them more accessible and "drawing-proof".

I don't know what your teacher is doing exactly, but if you're going
to scribe the graphs in writing it might be beneficial for him to do
the same in terms of the information.  For example if I have a line
graph in stats, my teacher would tell me what values were on the y
axis, what values were on the x, the lowest point, the highest point,
and usually the median or other information.  From there I can get a
pretty good idea of how far the line slopes and can give a decent
description of the graph.

Also, as Emily stated sometimes working with your teacher to modify
the problems so that they don't require graphing at all may be
beneficial, after all that's how the AP scores were set up.
Ultimately, whether you can draw a graph or even describe it to a tee
is not what's important; the issue of greatest importance is that you
understand the concepts.  So, if your teacher were to turn the
question around, and describe a graph with data and ask you to
interpret it, rather than giving you data and asking you to describe
visually what the graph would look like, it would demonstrate that you
know the material and understand it, while making it accessible and a
lot easier to manage for you and your teacher.  And, assuming the AP
people have gotten hard and started giving diagrams in the tests, it
would actually be good practice for what you'd see on the exam.  I've
done this or linear regressions, (which are only calculatable with a
graphing calculator, which of course is not accessible).  Once my
teacher asked me to interpret a written formula instead of asking me
to calculate one myself based on a data set I understood the concept
so much better.

Hope this helps, and best of luck in your course.  I took AP Psych so
I know how stressful working with diagrams could be, (Like Emily I was
relieved when I didn't have a brain diagram to label on mmy exam as my
teacher said "everyone" would), but try talking to your teacher to see
if you can work out a system.



On 2/26/13, Miso Kwak <kwakmiso at aol.com> wrote:
> Both to some extent.
> I understand the concept and usually do fairly well on homework because
> I can ask my teacher for help and such but I don't do well on my exams,
> which weighs more than 50% of the grade.
> During exams, I have a hard time both understanding and describing
> graphs but test mainly involves describing rather than interpreting.
> I agree that verbal description along with tactile will be helpful.
> I know it sounds vague... I just feel lost and frustrated well because
> I am not pulling grade I want and believe I could if both I and my
> teacher were prepared better.
>
>
>
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-- 
Kaiti