Books
- The Cartoon Guide to Statistics
Grade Level: 9 and up
This book makes statistics fun for anyone! The authors have created several situations that use play-on words to create comical stories that accurately present the material. This book could possibly replace the textbook.
- Focus in High School Mathematics: Reasoning and Sense Making in Statistics and Probability
Grade Level: 9-12
NCTM published a series of books that help students focus on reasoning and sense making in various subjects. This particular text focuses on six investigations that show students how the skills they have learned in class can be applied to a real problem they might encounter themselves. It is a great resource for teacher to use in class with their students!
- Why Do Buses Come in Threes?: The Hidden Mathematics of Everyday Life
Rob Eastaway and Jeremy Wyndham (authors)
Grade Level: 9+
Students need to see math in real life in order to fully appreciate it for what it is worth. This book poses several questions and analyzes them mathematically to show its readers how people can use math as a tool to solve real problems. This is a great read for high school students and teachers alike!
Websites
- Probability
Grade Level: 7+
This site is great for showing complex topics in a very simplistic way. My favorite part of this particular page is the probability line because it shows a visual representation for the range of possible probabilities. The site also gives some practice problems that are multiple choice, and the solutions are provided!
- Gapminder
Grade Level: 9+
Teachers cringe when students always ask when they will use math in the real world. Well this site is great for these students! Gapminder shows interactive data that can be played over a timeline. For example, students can watch how CO2 emissions have increased in each country across the globe over the past 180 years.
- Statistics Online Computational Resource
Grade Level: 9+
Students are comfortable working on computers in today's time, so having online resources can really engage the class as a whole. This site presents students with virtual experiments, games, and distributions that help students learn more about statistics in a fun, interactive setting.
Grade Level: 7+
When students are confused about the difference between an experiment and an outcome, they can go to this site to help them refine these skills and test their knowledge. The site is visually appealing and includes a spinner and die that students can actually spin or roll to test what should be expected. There are even five questions at the end that can give immediate feedback.
Grade Level: 9+
This site is a great resource for students to use to practice applying probability to solve riddles. It provides a hint and answer for each riddle, so the students can choose how much they want to see before seeing the solution. These problems teach students to read carefully and analytically. Each riddle has a ranking for the level of fun and difficulty. It is a great resource for students to practice on their own!
Articles
- Fantasy Baseball with a Statistical Twist
Lori Koban and Erin McNelis (authors)
Grade Level: For teachers
This article shows teachers a great way to incorporate statistics in a project that is relatable to the students. The project has students analyze several different important traits of baseball players, and they must use this to inform their decision for their fantasy team. The article gives an excellent description of each step of the project, and the students should have a lot of fun doing these types of analyses.
- Rare and Exotic Probability Bugs
James R. Kennis (author)
Grade Level: For teachers
Students often arrive at the correct answer when calculating probabilities, although they may arrive at this answer using incorrect processes. This article analyzes a few of the most common mistakes that students can make in the thinking process, which teachers can anticipate when they are teaching basic probability concepts.
- Shooting Free Throws, Probability, and the Golden Ratio
Terry Goodman (author)
Grade Level: For teachers
Many people love watching and/or playing basketball, and students can use basic probabilities to analyze their free-throwing skills. The article shows many different approaches to presenting the data. For example, a Punnett square is used to show the probability of making both free throws, making the first and missing the second, and finally missing the first which means the second free throw does not matter. Functions are then created and graphed to show the probability of making a free throw given a certain percentage for each player. This is a fun way to get students to look at situations analytically to make improvements in the future!- Analyzing Highway Speeding Data in the Statistics Classroom
Paul Laumakis (author)
Grade Level: For teachers
By the time students are taking a statistics course in high school, they are likely old enough to drive. Using a topic like this is a great way to show students how statistics can be applied in real life. The article looks at highway speeding data at two locations, and students should see the patterns that occur at both of these locations. They can then make decisions about how they should drive while they are at these locations, and they could even take this data to the police if necessary to show them how fast some people are driving through these areas. Statistics teachers should really consider giving this project for students to complete, not just for the practice of comparing two data sets.
Online Articles
- Stories vs. Statistics
John Allen Paulos (author)
Grade Level: 12+
This article shows the difference between posing hypothetical situations and analyzing real-life events. This highlights the fact that probabilities rare merely what you should expect out of a certain situation, not what is certain to happen. The author uses examples with which everyone should be familiar to show the relevance of statistics and probability. It is a good read for enriching those students in a statistics class.
- Probability of Playing College and Professional Baseball
Grade Level: 9+
Many athletes have a dream of playing professionally and living a generous lifestyle. I am not saying that teachers need to crush their students' dreams, but I think that students need to know the reality of the dream for which they are reaching. This site gives a table of values from the NCAA with statistics about high school, college, and professional athletes. Students could possibly use sites like these to see where probabilities are found in their lives.
- Did You Know: High School Facts & Figures
Grade Level: 9+
Students often see statistics as a challenging subject that uses numbers as words. However, statistics give meaning to situations in real life, and this article helps students see how they compare to other teens in many different areas. This site shows how much students watch television, how students watch/read the news, how students spend their summers, and many more universal topics like these.
Jake, I think you picked a great text set topic! Statistics and probability can be confusing for students with all of the different situations and formulas, but it can also be one of the most fun and exciting topics in mathematics. You picked some very diverse and interesting pieces, and I'm going to highlight just a few that caught my eye.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, The Cartoon Guide to Statistics caught me off guard in a good way! I love looking at cartoons, and I think this could appeal to a lot of your students. I'm intrigued by the fact that you said this could replace the textbook, but as I started looking at the sight, I couldn't agree with you more. Students need a little fun, and cartoons could give that little extra excitement to the class. This is a great find and a great opener to your text set.
Why do Buses Come in Threes is an excellent text that you included here. I feel as if too many students do not know how to use math as a way to help them in their everyday lives with problem solving, and this text could really open up some minds in your class. As teachers, we can try to show students how to use these tools outside of the classroom, but students get tired of us saying it. I'm sure they get tired of hearing it, too! With this text, I think it could open up their eyes and give them a chance to connect with something they enjoy or experience regularly.
Mathisfun.com is one of my favorite resources to use, and I'm so glad you found one you could use for probability and statistics. I cannot agree with you more when you point out how this site can take a complicated subject or topic and make it relevant to students' simplistic minds :) I like that there is multiple choice questions on this page as well! Most of them don't so this is a great find.
Gapminder could be used a lot in Statistics! I can remember when my teacher in AP Statistics showed us CO2 emissions, but she also used world population numbers as well. I think you could use this in class, but I would not want you to over use it. It could be a major over-kill if used too much. I think this is a great source for students to look at and realize how everything works in the world relating to math.
Braingle seems like a really cool website, and I can see students really getting into this! Riddles were never my thing, as we saw in that one activity in class about laundry, but I always loved the challenge! This is a great cross-curricular tie with math and reading comprehension, and I think many students would enjoy a problem that is not straight computation. They have to read to find the answer, and this can really hit home with the students who are also strong readers.
Rare and Exotic Probability Bugs can be really helpful as a student. Students can read and see what the most common mistakes are, relate to this mistake, and learn from their blunders even before they happen. This article is helpful as a pre-, during, and post read, and I think that students will be thankful to have a heads up from this article.
Overall, I think you made some great cross-curricular texts that can reach out to many students' interests. Sports is a huge deal in our generation and the future to come, and I think students do not realize how much statistics and probability goes into all of the sports and daily tasks that they do such as driving! Also, experiments take forever to do by hand, and these websites offer quick, great games that also gives responsive feedback! These articles are really fun to read,and I loved visiting your choices. I think they work well for your topic in all areas. Great job!