Math:
Here is a link to Kahn Academy's presentation of exponents and scientific notation if you need help with the first parts of the homework. If your memory of exponents and their properties is pretty good you can go directly to the presentations about scientific notation. If you need some refreshers there are lots of tutorials to choose from but it's a bit overwhelming.
These prefixes show up all the time in science and discussions about science. If we don't have them down cold it will impede any and all attempts at effective conversation about topics in science. Wiki is a good reference for the basic information.
...don't we have enough to learn already?
Unit Conversion like a physicist:
If you need a reminder of the sort of thing we are doing with unit conversions then this video may be helpful.
Graphing:
Making a scatter plot and finding slope of line of 'best fit'.
This 6 minute video is a great introduction to making scatter plots (like a lot of the data we are looking at in this class) and finding the equation of the line which best describes the trend in the data. We will use this in lab as well as class. Let me know if this link gets broken.
What is the value of better data visualization?
This article is a good read in spite of being a shameless sales pitch for a particular tool. Ignoring the commercial aspect it is a great introduction to the core concepts that are driving better data representation in our modern world. (pdf -16 pages)
For a deeper dive this review of data visualization in one industry is very rich. I would particularly recommend that last 10 pages from pp 40 - 49 as really valuable reading. (pdf - 51 pages,big file)
