Comments on: Statistics For All High School Students? http://www.dreambox.com/blog/statistics-for-all-high-school-students Math Learning, Fun & Education Blog : Dreambox Learning Thu, 18 Mar 2010 13:33:45 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 hourly 1 By: Aja http://www.dreambox.com/blog/statistics-for-all-high-school-students/comment-page-1#comment-3095 Aja Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:07:58 +0000 http://www.dreambox.com/blog/?p=2972#comment-3095 The 20-week course for all Juniors sounds like a great way to make sure that all students can intelligently interact with the statistics and claims they see in the real world. And thanks for the recommendation of the various software packages for exploring data with kids. I'd heard of TinkerPlots before but had forgotten about it. I'll be sure to check all of them out. The 20-week course for all Juniors sounds like a great way to make sure that all students can intelligently interact with the statistics and claims they see in the real world.

And thanks for the recommendation of the various software packages for exploring data with kids. I’d heard of TinkerPlots before but had forgotten about it. I’ll be sure to check all of them out.

]]> By: Doug Stein http://www.dreambox.com/blog/statistics-for-all-high-school-students/comment-page-1#comment-3092 Doug Stein Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:25:48 +0000 http://www.dreambox.com/blog/?p=2972#comment-3092 My first job (1983) after grad school (my degrees were in Physics and I studied Condensed Matter Theory - so I needed Calculus and a lot beyond that as well) was teaching in an independent secondary school in New England. The school had long had a requirement for a course in Probability and Statistics for all students. This was an excellent approach - especially when the school has a goal of enabling real mathematical discourse and wants to get students thinking mathematically and confident knowing when (and when not) to use mathematics as a tool to solve problems of interest to the student. This 20-week course was given in 11th Grade to all students emphasizing what's now called "EDA" Exploratory Data Analysis (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploratory_data_analysis or any books on EDA by David S. Moore of Purdue). Given that there are accessible tools whereby students can gather either physical data ("probes") or social data ("surveys") they can learn to propose and find (or not conclusively find) patterns in the data. Then students would have to present their conclusions to their peers and defend the ideas. BTW, some good toolsets for high school and younger kids to work with EDA is either Fathom Dynamic Data (http://www.keypress.com/x5656.xml) or TinkerPlots (http://www.keypress.com/x5715.xml) or InspireData (http://www.inspiration.com/InspireData). There are many others (including Excel if you prefer), but these three are particularly suited for exploration by students. My first job (1983) after grad school (my degrees were in Physics and I studied Condensed Matter Theory – so I needed Calculus and a lot beyond that as well) was teaching in an independent secondary school in New England. The school had long had a requirement for a course in Probability and Statistics for all students. This was an excellent approach – especially when the school has a goal of enabling real mathematical discourse and wants to get students thinking mathematically and confident knowing when (and when not) to use mathematics as a tool to solve problems of interest to the student.

This 20-week course was given in 11th Grade to all students emphasizing what’s now called “EDA” Exploratory Data Analysis (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploratory_data_analysis or any books on EDA by David S. Moore of Purdue).

Given that there are accessible tools whereby students can gather either physical data (”probes”) or social data (”surveys”) they can learn to propose and find (or not conclusively find) patterns in the data. Then students would have to present their conclusions to their peers and defend the ideas.

BTW, some good toolsets for high school and younger kids to work with EDA is either Fathom Dynamic Data (http://www.keypress.com/x5656.xml) or TinkerPlots (http://www.keypress.com/x5715.xml) or InspireData (http://www.inspiration.com/InspireData). There are many others (including Excel if you prefer), but these three are particularly suited for exploration by students.

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