Early on in my tenure at my current school, I had a student in Algebra 2 one year and in pre-calculus the next. He earned A's in both classes, graduated in 2007, and went off to college to study math in Southern California.
His senior year in college was the first year I taught statistics at our school. Back then, Christmas vacation was not the end of the semester, and I had some tests and projects to grade over the break, and my former student offered to help me grade them.
In hypothesis testing in statistics, if your P-value is less than some value alpha (usually 5%), you reject your null hypothesis, which is written as H-sub-zero. My former student told me that his college professor in elementary statistics used this mnemonic device for that lesson: If P is low, reject the Ho. I've taught it that way ever since.
Four years ago I had a freshman in an algebra class, and had him again as a senior last year in statistics. As a gift at the end of the year he gave me a t-shirt that says "If P is low, reject the Ho." I found on my lesson calendar the lesson during which I would first introduce that rhyme, and I made a note in my lesson plan to wear the t-shirt on that date. That date was today.
That former student who taught me the rhyme? He's now a math teacher about a half an hour away. I haven't (yet) heard from the one who gave me the t-shirt.
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