Data scientist Steven Stern has built a FIFA World Cup simulation to predict the results of every game. The statistical modelling is explained, along with the predicted results based on one million simulations. He predicts the winner will most likely be Spain.

(Let’s ignore the All White predictions….)

Data Cards

In case you missed it last week, we have created a set of All White data cards for your classroom.

These cards are a fantastic, real-world resource for data literacy. The data has been sourced from NZ Football, Friends of Football NZ, ESPN, and Instagram, and we have left a space for students to draw or paste an image of each player.

Dot Plots

This new PLD resource from Pip Arnold covers the different ways of teaching dot plots to students using the EIS-T model.

The International Association for Statistical Education (IASE) is running a free webinar on June 10 at 10 PM for teachers of Year 1–9 students on how Finland is approaching AI education and literacy through its six-year national strategic research program. Register here

Kia ora koutou,

We’re starting work on next year’s CensusAtSchool questionnaire and would love your help to keep it relevant and engaging.

There is no fixed commitment. You can contribute as much or as little as you like, from a five-minute review to trialing a draft survey with your class.

If you’re interested in helping shape the survey, please contact us to let us know. 

As covered in our Behind the Questions Guide, this process includes:

• Deciding which questions to keep, update, or remove.
• Sifting through student-submitted questions from the current survey.
• Proposing new questions and testing them with students.
• Checking survey length, Māori translation, technical functionality, and external review by the Ministry of Education, Stats NZ, and Stats NZ’s questionnaire design team.

We look for questions that are:

• Engaging, positive, relevant, easy for young students to understand and answer, and engaging for students.
• Suitable for a variety of data analysis activities and time-series comparisons.
• Covering well-being, lifestyle, interests, and opinions, and avoiding illegal or unsafe behaviours.
• Also asked by Stats NZ in official data surveys and international CensusAtSchool partners.

Do you use iNZight Lite, or do you want to learn how to use it? 

iNZight Lite is a free, browser-based tool to help high school students analyse data. Students can import their own dataset or explore built-in examples, using visualisation, transformation, and statistical analysis.

We’ve put together a guide for teachers with tutorials to get started, plus exercises and videos.

Have you seen our Year 9 Summary Investigations Teaching Sequence?

This is a suggested set of 12 lessons with a focus on the students collecting data about themselves. The materials were developed in conjunction with and trialled by Auckland Girls’ Grammar School, Lynfield College, and Northcote College mathematics and statistics departments.

Probability Resources for Year 4–6

See seven resources on our website, including the Great Coin Toss Challenge, Lucky Seven Dice Rolling, and the Last One Standing Game.

FIFA World Cup

Kicking off in less than a month on 11 June, the tournament features the All Whites making their third-ever appearance. New Zealand plays its opening match on 16 June, marking their first qualification for FIFA since 2010.

If you make data cards or other activities, or see any good resources for statistics classrooms, please let us know!

Tomorrow is World Stationery Day. Here are some ideas for how to incorporate this into your classroom:

Pen vs. Pencil

“Do Year [X] students write more words per minute with a pen or a pencil?”

Have half your class start with a pencil and the other half with a pen for a 1-minute writing sprint, then swap. It’s a fantastic way to discuss measurement error, reproducibility, and individual variability.

Gel Pen vs. Ballpoint Pen

A 2025 study in the American Journal of Human Psychology showed that gel pens significantly outperformed ballpoint pens in both writing speed and total word count. This study provides an excellent real-world context for teaching concepts such as paired t-tests and the Wilcoxon Rank Test, and the distinction between statistical significance and practical effect size.

Tomorrow (April 22) is Earth Day. Here are some ideas for how to incorporate this into your classroom:

• What sorts of insects are common in the grass areas of our school? Survey Your Environment – PPDAC cycle (Years 1–3)
• How are students’ travel methods to school changing over time? We have the data going back to 2005! Interestingly, car usage has remained flat at 40%. The real shift is happening elsewhere: walking has dropped from 26% to 21%, while bus usage has grown from 23% to 28%. You could also explore travel time to school.
• How are students’ opinions about climate change/global warming changing over time? Explore CensusAtSchool data. We have the data going back to 2005!

Digital tools: Harnessing technology for probability explorations and analysis Y1-11

Draft chapter by Chris Wild from Probability | Tūponotanga – A guide for teaching probability (ages 5–18). See also the related Resources.

Data Biographies

Datasets include rollercoasters, extreme heat, ladybugs, and more.

Data Education in Schools

Scottish website with lots of resources, including data selfies, data-themed escape rooms, AI literacy, and live online activities.

Data Gems

A list of datasets for use by New Zealand teachers and students, fostering statistical and mathematical thinking.

Stats Chat

Current statistics in the media, commentary, and sport match score predictions by lecturers in the Department of Statistics at The University of Auckland.

Our World in Data

Publishes research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems: Poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, and inequality. For example, did you know that oil spills from tankers have fallen by more than 90% since the 1970s? And deforestation is no longer inevitable?

GapMinder

Gapminder is an independent educational non-profit fighting global misconceptions. See how people really live around the world. And how well do you know New Zealand stats?

Figure.NZ 

Figure.NZ’s mission is to get the people of New Zealand using data to thrive. Figure.NZ helps everyone understand the things they care about, so they can make great choices.

Kaggle

Register for free to access over 50,000 datasets. Popular datasets include Trending YouTube Videos, Time Spent Streaming Music, and Starbucks Orders.

Data.govt.nz

New Zealand Government project with almost 30,000 datasets. There are many similar open data repositories, e.g., Australia, Europe, OECD, UK, USA, and the World Bank.

TidyTuesday Datasets

Explore datasets from the TidyTuesday project. The older datasets tend to have Excel or csv files.

Litter Intelligence

Explore New Zealand litter data. Led by New Zealand charity Sustainable Coastlines, the programme works in close collaboration with the Ministry for the Environment, Department of Conservation and Statistics New Zealand.

Motor Vehicle Database

This database contains all currently registered vehicles and is updated monthly.

Google’s Dataset Search Engine 

This tool aims to foster a data-sharing ecosystem that encourages data publishers to follow best practices for data storage and publication and gives scientists a way to demonstrate the impact of their work by citing the datasets they have produced.