Letting Go of the Idea that Stats Class Can’t be fun and FUN ctional!

1. Letting Go of the Idea that StatsClass Can’t be fun and FUNctional! Shonda Kuiper, Grinnell College Larry Lesser, The University of Texas at El Paso Dennis Pearl, The Ohio State University Michael A. Posner, Villanova University OVERVIEW DEMONSTRATIONS Having fun in statistics is motivating Key reference: Lesser & Pearl’s paper “Functional Fun in Statistics Teaching: Resources, Research, and Recommendations” in the Nov. 2008 Journal of Statistics Education (free, online) Games are an important tool for learning Play is much more than just fun, it is “essential to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and youth,” [Ginsburg 2007]. The importance of play is so essential that the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights has recognized the right of every child to engage in play and leisure activities. [Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Convention on the Rights of the Child. General Assembly Resolution 44/25 of 20 November 1989. Available at: www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/k2crc.htm retrieved May 9, 2009]. “In addition to developing skills, play can also uniquely motivate students to develop basic competencies and interest in more specialized domains of knowledge by encouraging personal and social investments” [Jenkins 2005, p 49]. Games Music Magic Cartoons • Games have a low threat of failure and sequence tasks to allow for early success. They maintain a threshold at which players feel challenged but not overwhelmed. • Games motivate students to learn because students clearly see how knowledge is related to the goals of the game. • Games allow statisticians to create simplified models of the world around us. Games can extend students’ knowledge and success from a simple model to a variety of more complex real world problems in a variety of disciplines. • Game based learning fosters a sense of engagement. Students become immersed in a game, share ideas which lead to peer-to-peer teaching, and are inspired to seek out new knowledge to improve their gaming abilities. • Educational uses of music • Can lower anxiety and build community • Jingles help recall content (VanVoorhis, 2002) • Multiple intelligences • Critical thinking in real contexts (Lesser, 2001) • Why Do Magic? • Everyone loves magic!!! • Student attention spans are…sorry, I lost my thought • Engages everyone • Cartoons require no special ability to use. • Easily added to course websites and into presentations • Wide variety of learning objectives covered by available resources. • Facilitates positive atmosphere and engaging whole class discussions • Examples • Help recall p-value by singing Lesser’s jingle (tune: “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”): “It is key to know what p-value means: It’s the chance with the null you obtain data that’s at least that extreme.” • Apply critical thinking to lyrics, such as this chorus from a Gary Morris country song: “Ain’t no sun, ain’t no blue sky. The wind blows cold now that you’ve gone away. And tomorrow, just like today, there’s a hundred percent chance of rain.” • Motivate probability/statistics thinking with examples like composition (e.g., Mozart’s Dice Game), characterizing hit songs, etc. • Educational uses of Magic • Break from traditional lecture-style learning • Reinforce/learn concepts without students even realizing they are learning • Offers critical thinkers the opportunity to think about statistics and the trick Examples • My Favorite Trick • “Out of This World” • Rated as one of the top ten tricks by magicians • Requires only a deck of cards (and practice) • Frequency cited as praise in teaching evaluations • Statistical concepts covered • Probability • Independence • Binomial distribution • Normal approximation to the binomial • Hypothesis testing • Examples • Simon and Perfection: Interactive Web-based games • that imitate psychology experiments. Students develop their own research questions, design their own experiments and present their results. • Casino Day: Students are motivated to understand conditional probability as they develop and play casino-type games. • Final Challenge: To prepare for the final exam, students form teams and attempt to quickly find common errors in student work, develop appropriate hypotheses, and calculate appropriate values. • References • Songs at www.causeweb.org/resources/fun/ • Lesser, L.(2001).Musical means: Using songs in teaching statistics.Teaching Statistics23(3), 81-85 • Lesser, L. (2002). Stat song sing-along. Stats, 33,16-17. • VanVoorhis, C.R.W. (2002). Stat jingles: To sing or not to sing. Teaching of Psychology 29, 249-50. • References • Reeves, A. (2008), Cartoon Corner: Humor-Based Mathematics Activities. Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. • Perales-Palacios, F. J. and Vilchez-Gonzales, J. M. (2002), "Teaching Physics by Means of Cartoons: A Qualitative Study in Secondary Education," Physics Education, 37(5), 400-406. • Resources • http://www.penguinmagic.com/ • http://homepage.villanova.edu/michael.posner References Jenkins, H. (2005). Getting into the game. Educational Leadership, 62(7), 48-51. Nippold, M.A http://web.grinnell.edu/individuals/kuipers/stat2labs