We live in interesting times. It warms my heart to see my discipline of mathematical modelling used to predict and manage the outbreak behaviour. How much easier it will be to explain Operations Research after this!

In New Zealand we have yet to feel the full force of the Covid-19 pandemic, but anxiety hangs in the air. Around the world schools and colleges are closing their doors to slow the spread of the virus and students and teachers are forced to enter the world of distance learning.

Nine years ago the Christchurch earthquakes meant that the University where I worked was in similar circumstances. It is not an easy time. Here are some resources to help

Help for College and University Introductory Statistics courses and Advanced Placement Statistics

Videos

At Statistics Learning Centre we have over fifty short, engaging, well-explained videos suitable for introductory statistics courses. Some videos have received over one million views and many are linked into courses all over the world. The videos are used by Australian Bureau of Statistics, World Vision, Open University and Open Polytechnic of New Zealand. You can see a summary of each of the videos here – which will help with selecting videos for your classes.

Most of these videos are available free-of-charge on YouTube. For a $5 monthly membership, the others are also available on YouTube. ALL of the videos are listed on our site.

Quizzes and activities

The combination of videos and activities can really help develop learners’ understanding. Two of the videos include quiz questions – Classifying Types of Data and Choosing which Statistical test to use, practice scenarios.

We also have StatsLC online courses based on the New Zealand curriculum which instructors in other countries are welcome to use. We are happy to give a month free trial to teachers, and student subscription is just $5 a head. If there is sufficient demand we will make a tailored course for introductory college statistics.

Help for high school students and teachers

In New Zealand we have a unique and innovative statistics curriculum, which means that materials developed in other countries to teach statistics are not particularly useful. Our StatsLC resources are specifically tailored to the New Zealand curriculum and particularly NCEA levels 1, 2 and 3. Subscriptions are currently $5 per student for levels 2 and 3 and $1 per student for level 1. Teachers can track student participation. As always, we are happy to give a two month free trial to teachers and students.

Help for Primary school teachers, students and parents

It is concerning to think of schools closing their doors. Teachers cannot just send work home and expect parents to be able to help their children to complete it. At Creative Maths we have a variety of resources, many of which are free, that can be used to keep learners engaged in mathematics at home. Games and activities are a great way for learners to keep up their maths fluency and interest.

Take a look at these:

Free things

Factor Detector – a pen-and-paper puzzle that develops fluency around multiplication facts

Guess the Multy – a free online game like “Guess Who” around multiples and factors

Spiral drawing – learn about angles – it’s mesmerising!

Things to buy for families

Ages 4 to 7 The Cat Pack – so many fun mathematical activities and games

Ages 7 to 12 Dragonistics data cards – a rich set of 240 dragons and attribute cards with many applications

Multiplication fluency – Multy Facty game

Fraction addition – Fraction Action game

How else can we help?

There are many other sites providing a deluge of different resources. We draw attention to particularly appealing ones in our fortnightly newsletter.

If you find an appealing one, let us know in the comments below!