Statistics – Community of Adult Math Instructors (CAMI)

Civic Statistics and Statistical Literacy

Usha and Iddo led us through an approach to exploring statistics.

A number of us were part of a lovely meeting a while back on statistics. Iddo Gal started the meeting by sharing an overview of a guide he and a few colleagues created for teaching civic statistics and statistical literacy. Iddo is presented at the U.S. Conference on Teaching Statistics in Pennsylvania a few weeks after the CAMI meeting.

Skellzies!

Ramon had his students work on research projects, sharing their cultural backgrounds and relating them to mathematics. He shared the results of one student’s project and then led us into an exploration of the New York City street game called skellzies, skully caps, skellies, etc. (depending where and when you grew up in the city.)

When we walked into the room, this was on the board:

Teaching Problem: For three consecutive semesters, an adult education teacher began classes with roughly 36 students and ended with roughly 12 students. What can the teacher try that will help to reduce attrition?

Continue reading “Skellzies!”

Roller Derby (& probabilities in passing HSE exams)

April’s meeting was in two parts: First we played a dice game named Roller Derby, developing and analyzing game strategies. Then we discussed some of the odds of the TASC.

After introductions and a brief discussion of how we’ve each used dice in our classes in the past, Mark gave out a Roller Derby board – basically a sheet divided into twelve columns, numbered 1-12 – and twelve colored chips to each person and invited everyone to distribute their chips across their board any way they wanted.

Then he broke up the group into pairs, gave out a red and white die to each pair and gave out the rules: Continue reading “Roller Derby (& probabilities in passing HSE exams)”