We hope you are having a good first term! Here’s your latest updates…

Upcoming Seminar

What happens when mathematics and craft teachers work collaboratively?

Friday, 20 March 2026, 8 am (NZDT)

Discover how educators in Denmark paired craft and mathematics to create innovative, integrated lesson plans. Participants will receive English-language teaching materials and classroom resources.

Teaching Resources

Data Towers

This is a lovely adaptation of our Year 4-6 data cards.

Natural History Data Sets

A series of three large data sets with teaching notes:

• Blackbirds involves: averages, spread, graphical summaries, dealing with missing data, and general linear modelling.
• Magpies involves: averages, spread, graphical summaries, dealing with missing data, time series, and categorical data.
• Slugs involves: grouping data, contingency tables, and dealing with missing data.

Data Analysis Videos

The University of Otago hosts a series of in-depth data analysis videos, best suited for high school students. Examples include:

• Property sales in North Shore City involves: data cleaning, exploration, confidence intervals, and tests for differences between means.
• Rare threatened bird, the Rock Wren, involves: matched data samples, confidence intervals using the t-distribution, and bootstrapping.
• Adjusting to high altitude in the Himalayas involves: a designed study with repeated measures, confidence intervals, and tests on matched data.

CensusAtSchool Questionnaire

The questionnaire is open throughout the school year until the end of November. Get started

It was wonderful seeing so many teachers at last year’s Statistics Teachers’ Day in Auckland. Planning is already underway for this year’s event!

Later this year, we’ll let you know the overarching theme and put out a call for workshops and talks.

In the meantime, save the date:

Statistics Teachers’ Day 2026
Friday November 27

The 2025-2026 CensusAtSchool questionnaire is open! Participation is available throughout the year, giving you lots of time to get involved. We’d love for you to take part with your students.

Register, take part, and get the data

Other Upcoming Events

PMA Seminar Day, Auckland, March 7, 2026

Mark your calendars! The Primary Mathematics Association’s Seminar Day is back on Saturday, 7 March 2026, at the Waipuna Conference Centre. This year’s theme, “Enhancing & Enriching,” focuses on marrying proven classroom “gold” with the refreshed curriculum.

Dr Vince Wright’s keynote session, Implementing a ‘knowledge-rich’ mathematics curriculum, will dive into the new Mathematics and Statistics Curriculum, exploring how to help students not just “know” maths, but “know why” it works and “know when” to apply it.

It is a fantastic local opportunity to get practical guidance on the revised curriculum and connect with fellow Auckland educators.

View the programme and register now

ICOTS 12, Brisbane, July 12–17, 2026

A world-class professional development opportunity is coming to our doorstep. Brisbane is hosting the 12th International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS), the first time this huge event has been held in the Southern Hemisphere.

Centered on the theme “What? Who? When? How?”, the conference features global experts from Duke, Oxford, and UCLA. Sessions are designed specifically for school-level educators to explore new strategies in assessment and data science. It is a rare chance to bring the latest global trends in data literacy directly back to your New Zealand classroom.

Learn more and register here

Teaching Resource

Pachinkogram

A great visualisation of conditional probabilities. Recommended by Michael Walden. Learn more by checking out his 2025 Statistics Teachers’ Day keynote: Integrating Technology in the Classroom.

Have you seen or created a resource we should share? Let us know!

Have a wonderful week,
Rachel, Anne & Pip

The 2025-2026 Census is open! Participation is available throughout the year, giving you lots of time to get involved.

Register, prepare, take part, and explore the data

Upcoming Events

PMA Seminar Day, Auckland, March 7, 2026

Mark your calendars! The Primary Mathematics Association’s Seminar Day is back on Saturday, 7 March 2026, at the Waipuna Conference Centre. This year’s theme, “Enhancing & Enriching,” focuses on marrying proven classroom “gold” with the refreshed curriculum.

Dr Vince Wright’s keynote session, Implementing a ‘knowledge-rich’ mathematics curriculum, will dive into the new Mathematics and Statistics Curriculum, exploring how to help students not just “know” maths, but “know why” it works and “know when” to apply it.

It is a fantastic local opportunity to get practical guidance on the revised curriculum and connect with fellow educators.

View the programme and register now

ICOTS 12, Brisbane, July 12–17, 2026

A world-class professional development opportunity is coming to our doorstep. Brisbane is hosting the 12th International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS), the first time this huge event has been held in the Southern Hemisphere.

Centered on the theme “What? Who? When? How?”, the conference features global experts from Duke, Oxford, and UCLA. Sessions are designed specifically for school-level educators to explore new strategies in assessment and data science. It is a rare chance to bring the latest global trends in data literacy directly back to your New Zealand classroom.

Learn more and register here

Teaching Resource

Pin Number Analysis

A deep dive into what people choose as their pin numbers. Recommended by Michael Walden. Learn more by checking out his 2025 Statistics Teachers’ Day keynote: Integrating Technology in the Classroom.

Have you seen or created a resource we should share? Let us know!

Have a wonderful week,
Rachel, Anne & Pip

The 2025-2026 Census has officially reopened! Participation is available throughout the year, giving you lots of time to get involved.

Visit our website to register, prepare, take part, and explore the data

Teaching Resources

NEW: Year 4–6 Data Cards

We’ve created CensusAtSchool data cards for Year 4–6 students to go with the sets for Year 1–3 students.

Top NZ Baby Names: Noah & Isla

Explore the new rankings alongside historic datasets to see how Kiwi names have evolved. Perfect for a classroom discussion as everyone is learning new names. (See also: Interactive baby name graph for the US.)

The Evolution of Trust Game 

Recommended by Michael Walden. Learn more by checking out his 2025 Statistics Teachers’ Day keynote: Integrating Technology in the Classroom.

Have you seen or created a resource we should share? Let us know!

Have a wonderful week,
Rachel, Anne & Pip

Welcome back! We hope you return refreshed and energised for the new school year.

For those who missed last year’s Statistics Teachers’ Day, Michael Walden’s keynote, Integrating Technology in the Statistics Classroom, is now available on YouTube. In it, Michael shares ten fantastic web-based resources to transform your teaching.

Spoiler alert: His top-rated resource is The Pudding, which features incredible visualisations like Human Terrain, a 3D look at the world’s population. Here is a snippet of New Zealand in 3D:

Want more ideas?

• Explore more workshop resources from the Statistics Teachers’ Day here.
• Get your students involved in real-world data by voting now for New Zealand’s Bug of the Year 2026. It’s a fantastic context for data collection and discussion. But hurry, voting closes on February 16.

Have a wonderful week,
Rachel, Anne & Pip