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 math teacher and statistics coordinator at College of the Canyons—a large community college in Santa Clarita, California. I’m personally thrilled to see this article in Statistics Teacher because we often don’t have authors from community colleges. Matt describes the situation facing many community colleges, which is the focus away from a predominantly algebra-driven curriculum to a statistics one. He also provides a rationale for why we are seeing this change and tips for teachers in community colleges also making this statistics education–focused change.
The second article is by Allison Dorko, a doctoral candidate in mathematics education at Oregon State University. The topic is the investigation of Double Stuf Oreos and whether they actually have double the stuffing of regular Oreos. Allison does a nice job of explaining how she uses this topic in her high-school classes involving inferential statistics. As a modification, she also describes how to take the same topic and analyze it in a middle-school setting.
The third article, by Leah Dorazio at San Francisco University High School, describes a pertinent topic for all teachers of inferential statistics: the significance (no pun intended) of the p-value = 0.05. Leah does a great job of showing two examples of activities students can do in class that will lead them to better understand why the “standard” p-value is around 0.05.
I encourage you to read all these great articles! All have information that can be used directly in the classroom at various levels.
We encourage our readers to write for Statistics Teacher! We love to publish a variety of articles about statistics throughout the pre-K–16 range. Our editors are also happy to assist if you have an idea for an article. Please send any articles or ideas you have for consideration to Angela Walmsley.
Regards,
Angela Walmsley, Editor
Concordia University Wisconsin
Leave a Reply