By Matt Teachout We are reaching a crisis at community colleges across the country. The number of STEM majors (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) has dramatically decreased, while the number of non-STEM majors continues to rise. At my college alone, only about 30% of our students are STEM majors. The Problem Here is the problem as I see it: The … [Read more...] about Helping Community College Math Instructors Teach Statistics Effectively
Archives for December 2016
Editors’ Note: Winter
Welcome back to school! It’s so much fun to see photos and hear of back-to-school stories, which seem to take place from July through the end of September in the United States. I hope this edition of Statistics Teacher finds you well, back in the groove of your classroom, and that it contributes to your statistical teaching this year. The first article is by Matt Teachout, a … [Read more...] about Editors’ Note: Winter
Lesson Plan: Confidence in Salaries in Petroleum Engineering
By Susan A. Peters and AnnaMarie Conner (Grades 9–12+) Originally published in October 2016, this lesson introduces students to bootstrapping methods for making inferences about a population parameter using a randomly selected sample from the population. Students use random samples of salaries for petroleum engineering graduates—graduates employed in the profession earning … [Read more...] about Lesson Plan: Confidence in Salaries in Petroleum Engineering
Lesson Plan: The Gumball Machine
By Alexander White, M. Alejandra Sorto, and Rini Oktavia (Grades K–12+) Originally published in April 2014, this lesson gives students the opportunity to explore and discuss the variation that occurs in sampling. Students are asked to imagine a gumball machine contains 1 red, 2 green, 3 yellow, and 4 blue gumballs that were thoroughly mixed before they were put into the … [Read more...] about Lesson Plan: The Gumball Machine