Moving around the education sector My life in education has included being a High School maths teacher, then teaching at university for 20 years. I then made resources and gave professional development workshops for secondary school teachers. It was exciting … Continue reading →
It is possible to get a passing grade in a statistics paper by putting numbers into formulas and words into memorised phrases. In fact I suspect that this is a popular way for students to make their way through a … Continue reading →
We don’t like to think we are wrong One of the key ideas in statistics is that sometimes we will be wrong. When we report a 95% confidence interval, we will be wrong 5% of the time. Or in other … Continue reading →
The whole may be greater than the sum of the parts, but the whole still needs those parts. A reflective teacher will think carefully about when to concentrate on the whole, and when on the parts. Golf If you were … Continue reading →
Recently someone asked: “I don’t suppose you’d like to blog a little on the pedagogical knowledge relevant to statistics teaching, would you? A ‘top five statistics student misconceptions (and what to do about them)’ would be kind of a nice … Continue reading →
Pedagogical content knowledge for Statistics Pedagogical content knowledge means knowing how to teach a specific subject, discipline or context. There is a school of thought that the skill of teaching is transferable between subjects, so long as the teacher knows … Continue reading →
“Let’s start at the very beginning – a very good place to start. When you read you begin with A, B,C!” When you do statistics you begin with…probability? the mean? graphs? Begin at the end But really, is the beginning … Continue reading →
“Let’s start at the very beginning – a very good place to start. When you read you begin with A, B,C!” When you do statistics you begin with…probability? the mean? graphs? Begin at the end But really, is the beginning … Continue reading →
Problems with the Golden Rule The Golden rule is fundamental to most human cultures. It reads, approximately, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” or “Treat others as you would like to be treated.” It sounds … Continue reading →
Optimise everything! I had a colleague who believed that everything could and should be optimised. He had a diet Linear Program which he used to plan his meals to provide optimal nutrition. Unfortunately the Linear Program didn’t seem to have … Continue reading →
