This site is a collection of information about references to mathematics (and probability/statistics) in fiction. Users can see an entire list (sorted by author, title or publication date)and can browse through the database to find references by genre, topic, motif or medium.
May 25, 2010 Activity webinar presented by Ivan Ramler, St. Lawrence University and hosted by Leigh Slauson, Capital University. This webinar discusses an undergraduate Mathematical Statistics course project based on the popular video game Guitar Hero. The project included: 1) developing an estimator to address the research objective "Are notes missed at random?", 2) learning bootstrapping techniques and R programming skills to conduct hypothesis tests and 3) evaluating the quality of the estimator(s) under certain sets of scenarios.
June 22, 2010 Activity webinar presented by Paul Roback, St. Olaf College and hosted by Leigh Slauson, Capital University. This webinar describes an in-class activity, motivated by Case Study 1.1.1 in The Statistical Sleuth, in which students compose haiku poems about statistics. Their poems are used to introduce two-sample t-tests and randomization tests. In addition, the in-class experiment leads to good discussion about experimental design issues, where students compare our design to the actual experiment described in Amabile et al.(1985) "Motivation and Creativity: Effects of Motivational Orientation on Creative Writers", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 48(2): 393-399. I use this activity on the first day of our second course in applied statistics (Statistical Modeling), but it could easily be used in an introductory course as well. Examples of haiku poems which have resulted from this activity can be found under CAUSEweb > Resources > Fun > Poem (direct link), or at www.causeweb.org/cwis/SPT--FullRecord.php?ResourceId=1883.
January 12, 2010 T&L webinar presented by Marsha Lovett (Carnegie Mellon University) and hosted by Jackie Miller (The Ohio State University). In Statistics as in many disciplines, students need to learn about complex concepts and dynamically changing processes. How can instructors help their students begin to "see" these complex topics the way experts do, and are there tools that can help? In this webinar, I will review key findings on how computer visualizations and simulations can best support student learning and then take those findings to generate effective strategies for teaching with simulations and visualizations.
March 9, 2010 T&L webinar presdented by Dalene Stagl (Duke University) and hosted by Jackie Miller (The Ohio State University). During the past 20 years, undergraduate education has shifted from student as passive recipient of information to student as active participant in the classroom. I wrote an article for Chance magazine's 20th anniversary issue titled, "Using Chance to Engage Undergraduates in the Study of Statistics." The article gave examples of activities inspired by Chance magazine articles from the last 20 years. This webinar will take articles from a recent issue of Chance and demonstrate the ease with which any issue can be used to develop class activities that are fun for high school students and undergraduates whether the course is a basic quantitative literacy course, an AP statistics course, an introductory course for non-statistics majors, or a core or elective course for the statistics major.
March 9, 2010 T&L webinar presdented by Dalene Stagl (Duke University) and hosted by Jackie Miller (The Ohio State University). During the past 20 years, undergraduate education has shifted from student as passive recipient of information to student as active participant in the classroom. I wrote an article for Chance magazine's 20th anniversary issue titled, "Using Chance to Engage Undergraduates in the Study of Statistics." The article gave examples of activities inspired by Chance magazine articles from the last 20 years. This webinar will take articles from a recent issue of Chance and demonstrate the ease with which any issue can be used to develop class activities that are fun for high school students and undergraduates whether the course is a basic quantitative literacy course, an AP statistics course, an introductory course for non-statistics majors, or a core or elective course for the statistics major.
April 13, 2010 T&L webinar presented by Jeanne Albert and Bill Peterson (Middlebury College) and hosted by Jackie Miller (The Ohio State University). This year, Jeanne and Bill assumed co-editorship of the Chance News Wiki, which as of March 15 will be moving to CAUSEweb. The Wiki provides reviews of current news stories that are relevant to teaching statistics and probability, along with links to original articles and related resources. This webinar will describe the various ways that Chance project materials have been used, in areas ranging from traditional introductory statistics to statistical literacy courses to first-year seminars. We will also discuss the mechanics of posting to the Wiki, and hope to inspire some new contributors.
May 11, 2010 T&L webinar presented by Ivo Dinov (UCLA) and hosted by Jackie Miller (The Ohio State University). This webinar will present data, tools, materials and the pedagogical approach of the Statistics Online Computational Resource (SOCR) for technology-enhanced probability and statistics education. Following a review of the different types of SOCR online resources, we will go over two specific classroom utilization examples. The first one provides a hands-on demonstration of a statistical concept (CLT) using interactive virtual experiments and simulations. The second example will showcase the use of SOCR resources to address interesting social, health, environmental, scientific, and engineering challenges. In this case, we'll focus on the Ozone pollution in California, formulate health-related hypotheses, identify appropriate data and employ web-based exploratory and statistical data analysis tools.
June 8, 2010 T&L webinar presented by Lynette Hoelter (University of Michigan) and hosted by Leigh Slauson (Capital University). This webinar will introduce several sources of data and tools that could be useful in both general and social science-specific statistics instruction. The Social Science Data Analysis Network (SSDAN) and the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), both a part of the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, are collaborating on two NSF-funded projects to support quantitative literacy in the social sciences. Resources from each organization and TeachingWithData.org, a result of the partnership, will be highlighted. Materials range from small extracts of data from the Census and American Community Surveys used with specific teaching modules to full datasets with accompanying online analysis tools.