concepts
8 March 2021
Just how important is it to know your multiplication facts? There is confusion over the aim for number fluency and the means by which is it achieved. Let me explain. Many people learned their “times tables” by rote, sometimes under threat. This led to people know the right answer, but not necessarily knowing how to apply them. For example if they were asked what is five times three they could say 15, but given $150 to split up between five people they would not know how to proceed. (Having said that, if it’s money involved people often do better.) I […]
8 April 2019
Videos about probability distributions Many introductory statistics courses include a considerable section on probability distributions, featuring the binomial and normal distributions. Consequently we have a suite of videos about probability distribution models, to help learners and teachers, especially those who wish to aim for conceptual more than mathematical understanding. In this post I will outline the main videos available on the Dr Nic’s Maths and Stats YouTube Channel. They already belong to thousands of playlists and lists of recommended resources in textbooks the world over. We are happy for teachers and learners to continue to link to them. Having them listed […]
13 November 2018
Conceptual vs procedural when teaching maths and stats April 2008, Salt Lake City. It was my first NCTM conference and I was awed by the number of dedicated teachers of mathematics in one place. I had soaked in a pre-conference series about teaching statistics and my head was full of revolutionary ideas. I can’t remember the workshop I was attending but I declared that I saw no point in teaching students to calculate standard deviations by hand – and that I never did. The response was awesome! There was just about a stand-up battle between teachers who agreed with me […]
18 September 2018
Population, Sample, Sampling distribution of the mean Among the many contenders for Dr Nic’s confusing terminology award is the term “Sampling distribution.” One problem is that it is introduced around the same time as population, distribution, sample and the normal distribution. A common confusion is between the standard error and the standard deviation. Here is how I explain it: Basic idea of inferential statistics Whenever we take a sample it will contain sampling error, which can also be described as sampling variation. No sample is a perfect representation of the population. When you calculate a sample mean, you do not […]
9 January 2018
It delights me that several of my statistics videos have been viewed over half a million times each. As well there is a stream of lovely comments (with the odd weird one) from happy viewers, who have found in the videos an answer to their problems. In this post I will outline the main videos available on the Statistics Learning Centre YouTube Channel. They already belong to 24,000 playlists and lists of recommended resources in textbooks the world over. We are happy for teachers and learners to continue to link to them. Having them all in one place should make […]
18 September 2017
Political polls – why do they work – or don’t This is written in the week before the 2017 New Zealand General Election and it is an exciting time. Many New Zealanders are finding political polls fascinating right now. We wait with bated breath for each new announcement – is our team winning this time? If it goes the way we want, we accept the result with gratitude and joy. If not, then we conclude that the polling system was at fault. Many wonder how on earth asking 1000 people can possibly give a reading of the views of all […]
13 July 2017
Study elections in mathematics because it is important Too often mathematics is seen as pure and apolitical. Maths teachers may keep away from concepts that seem messy and without right and wrong answers. However, teachers of mathematics and statistics have much to offer to increase democratic power in the upcoming NZ general elections (and all future elections really). The bizarre outcomes for elections around the world recently (2016/2017 Brexit, Trump) are evidence that we need a compassionate, rational, informed populace, who is engaged in the political process, to choose who will lead our country. Knowledge is power, and when people […]
24 April 2017
Graphs – beauty and truth (with apologies to Keats) A good graph is elegant I really like graphs. I like the way graphs turn numbers into pictures. A good graph is elegant. It uses a few well-placed lines to communicate what would take a paragraph of text. And like a good piece of literature or art, a good graph continues to give, beyond the first reading. I love looking at my YouTube and WordPress graphs. These graphs tell me stories. The WordPress analytics tell me that when I put up a new post, I get more hits, but that everyday […]
23 January 2017
STEM is a popular acronym in educational circles and is used to refer to careers and educational tasks. Though most know that the four letters stand for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, it can be difficult to pin down what exactly it means. In this post I suggest that there are two related uses of STEM as a description. STEM The term, STEM, originated in the USA in the late 1990s to describe specific careers and education for these careers. There seems to be no universally agreed-upon definition of STEM. From a careers perspective, the focus is on making sure that […]
6 September 2016
I’ve been thinking lately…. Sometimes it pays to stop and think. I have been reading a recent textbook for mathematics teachers, Dianne Siemon et al, Teaching mathematics: foundations to middle years (2011). On page 47 the authors asked me to “Take a few minutes to write down your own views about the nature of mathematics, mathematics learning and mathematics teaching.” And bearing in mind I see statistics as related to, but not enclosed by mathematics, I decided to do the same for statistics as well. So here are my thoughts: The nature of mathematics Mathematics is a way of modelling and […]