Announcements: Spring

New Book: Focus on Statistics: Investigations for the Integration of Statistics into Grades 9-12 Mathematics Classrooms
Written by veteran teachers, this book includes 19 investigations to help you implement key statistical concepts in your classroom.
Download a Sample Investigation
Purchase on Amazon

April Is Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month
Organize and host activities in April for Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month. Past activities have included workshops, competitions, festivals, lectures, symposia, department open houses, math art exhibits, and math poetry readings. Please share your activities on social media using #mathstat and tag @AmstatNews. The goal is to increase public understanding of and appreciation for statistics and mathematics.

Statsketball Competition Cancelled
The 2020 Statsketball competition has been cancelled since the NCAA Basketball Tournament has been cancelled due to coronavirus concerns. However, the ThisIsStatistics team is exploring alternatives and will share updates via the ThisIsStatistics webpage, social media, and email.

What’s Going On in This Graph? a Resource for Out-of-School Students
Visit The New York Times for ideas about using What’s Going On in This Graph? during school closures.

New ASA Community Supports Online Teaching
The ASA created a new ASA Community, Online Teaching Resources and Discussion Group, to help faculty who must move their teaching online due to COVID-19. You will need to log in to your ASA account and click on the link to Join Community (blue button at the top right). The community has (or will have) seven folders that can be used as repositories for material-lesson plans, teaching resources, online tools, articles about teaching statistics online, lesson videos, resources for teaching R online, and general (nonstatistical) tips for teaching online. The success of this endeavor depends on everyone contributing what they can to the material posted there. The ASA is also extending a free trial membership to K-12 and community college educators.

Upcoming Deadlines

2020 Data Visualization Poster Competition and Project Competition
Deadline Extension and New Rules
Posters: June 1; Projects: June 1

Introduce your K-12 students to statistics through the annual poster and project competitions directed by the ASA/NCTM Joint Committee on Curriculum in Statistics and Probability.

Due to recent school closures and concerns related to COVID-19, we are extending the poster competition deadline to June 1 this year. The poster entry will also require submitting a high-quality image of your poster or using another option to create a poster electronically (e.g., PowerPoint). Please do not mail your actual poster.

Projects (grades 7-12) remain due June 1.

Please look closely at the rules for the project competition and rubric for the poster competition.

For questions or concerns, please contact Rebecca Nichols.

Call for Submissions: Special Issue of Teaching Statistics
Deadline July 25, 2020

The special issue of Teaching Statistics will be published in 2020 as an e-book, titled Teaching Data Science and Statistics: Senior School or Introductory Tertiary. A variety of chapters is envisioned, with a small number of invited chapters and most oriented to classroom-ready ideas, case studies, and/or materials embodying good teaching practice. Each of the latter type of chapter should focus on one or more aspects of statistical data investigations and data science. Authors will find valuable guidance in Unit 1 of the framework of the International Data Science for School Project. Case study approaches should embody classroom-ready implementation, with a rich data context with a number of variables. Get more information.

Grants, Awards, and Scholarships from the Mathematics Education Trust
Deadlines in May

The Mathematics Education Trust (MET) provides grants, awards, and scholarships for NCTM members. Get information about the opportunities and upcoming deadlines.

The Modeling the Future Challenge: A Math Modeling and Data Analysis Competition
Webinar in spring 2020 and challenge in fall 2020

Give your students the opportunity to take a deep dive into real-world data analysis. The Modeling the Future Challenge, managed by The Actuarial Foundation and Institute for Competition Sciences, is a math-modeling and data-analysis competition for high-school students. The three-phase competition challenges high-school students to make the best recommendations to companies, organizations, or government agencies based on their own mathematical modeling of future trends and risk analysis. After passing a rigorous qualifying scenario by answering a set of questions related to a real-world data-set, the qualifying teams conduct a research and analysis project about a topic of their choice within the annual theme. The teams compile a final report of their research. Students who qualify for the project phase of competition have access to an actuarial mentor to answer questions and guide them through their research. Actuaries are also involved in the review of student reports and the selection of finalist teams. These finalist teams are then invited to compete for $60,000 in scholarships and prizes at the annual Modeling the Future Symposium.

Participate in a free webinar to learn more about the challenge and how to implement it in your classroom.

Resources and Opportunities

Build Quantitative Literacy with Graphs
What’s Going On in This Graph? is a free, weekly online feature of the ASA and New York Times Learning Network. New York Times graphs of different types and context act as a springboard for middle- and high-school students in any course (college also welcome) to think critically about graphs. On most Wednesdays from September to April, graphs are released. Students respond to three questions: What do you notice? What do you wonder? What’s going on in this graph? Teachers moderate their responses online from 9 a.m. – 2 p.m. ET. On Friday, the original article, additional questions, and “stat nuggets”—definitions of statistical terms and where they are seen in the graph—are revealed. No statistics background is necessary. This is free and open to those around the world.

ASA/AMATYC Joint Committee Resources for Teaching Statistics
The American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges/American Statistical Association Joint Committee maintains a webpage of information for statistics teachers, including links to classroom resources, pedagogy and course content, and recordings of previous webinars.

New Digital Resources from ThisIsStatistics
ThisIsStatistics, the ASA’s public education campaign, has posted a new video, “How Statisticians are Fighting to Cure Cancer” and is adding to its list of statisticians’ profiles. They also added a listing of teacher resources for the digital classroom during COVID-19 social distancing.

StatPREP
This is a course resource project of the Mathematical Association of America in conjunction with the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges and the ASA. It is still under development, but there are already many useful resources available, including data- and computation-based curricular materials with an emphasis on data visualization, a variety of apps with accompanying lesson plans, and data sets. In addition, there are webinars, tutorials, links to workshops and newsletters, and instructor notes for almost all topics. The audience for this project is all instructors of introductory statistics at the secondary and post-secondary levels.

NCTM’s Catalyzing Change
NCTM’s Catalyzing Change in High School Mathematics: Initiating Critical Conversations, is for anyone involved in high-school mathematics education.

Statistics Resource List for K–12 Teachers
This document includes resources from the ASA, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and others that support the teaching of statistics and probability as covered by the Common Core State Standards and other state career and college preparation standards. Included are lesson plans, applets, videos, data sources, media, technology, teacher preparation materials, and assessment resources.

Statistics Resource List for Students, Educators, and Early-Career Professionals
The resource list includes competitions, grants, scholarships, fellowships, internships, and other awards for students, educators, and early-career professionals.

Stats+Stories Podcast
The ASA has partnered with the Stats + Stories group at Miami University, a collaboration between statisticians and journalists producing podcasts that give the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics. To listen, visit the Stats+Stories website or iTunes.

Statistics Education Webinars
The ASA offers free webinars on K-12 statistics education topics. This series was developed as part of the follow-up activities to the Meeting Within a Meeting Statistics Workshop. NCTM also offers webinars on math and statistics education topics.

Submit Lesson Plans and Articles to Statistics Teacher
Consider submitting your K-12 statistics lesson plans for publication or writing and sharing an article. We also accept announcement submissions. For more information, see the ST submission guidelines or contact the ST editors.