Jake Wills from Westlake Boys High School has created a Youtube channel for those of you getting started with NZGrapher with some tutorial videos on it. You can access this here: https://www.youtube.com/user/mathsnz

Recent changes include:

• Added in informal confidence intervals for dot plots (this if for the Year 12 internal)
• Changed the way the labels for this button appear as well to make it more clear what each one does.

The following changes have also been made in an attempt to get students to write about what they see rather than what is calculated as a first step:

• Scatter plots no longer automatically add in the trend line, this must be added in by clicking the ‘Regression Line’ button.
• Dot plots no longer automatically show the summary statistics or box and whiskers, this must be added in by clicking the ‘Summaries’ or ‘Box Plots’ buttons.

MathsNZ and NZGrapher are free for you to use. If you want Jake to create a folder for you so you can upload your own datasets for all your students to access easily without having to download them and re-upload them, contact Jake at MathsNZ.

New Zealand teachers if you have not yet used Tinker plots here is your chance! Used in conjunction with Ruth Kaniuk’s resources this will enhance the way you teach probability concepts. Use the author advanced search function on C@S to find all of Ruth’s resources.

Today we are releasing Version 2.2 of TinkerPlots.  This is a special, free version, which will expire in a year  — August 31, 2015.

To start the downloading process

Go to the TinkerPlots home page and click on the Download TinkerPlots link in the right hand panel. You’ll fill out a form. Shortly after submitting it, you’ll get an email with a link for downloading.

Help others find the TinkerPlots Download page

If you have a website, blog, or use a social media site, please help us get the word out so others can find the new TinkerPlots Download page. You could mention that you are using TinkerPlots 2.2 and link to www.srri.umass.edu/tinkerplots.

Why is this an expiring version?

As we explained in this correspondence, until January of 2014, TinkerPlots was published and sold by Key Curriculum, a division of McGraw Hill Education. Their decision to cease publication caught us off guard, and we have yet to come up with an alternative publishing plan. We created this special expiring version to meet the needs of users until we can get a new publishing plan in place.

What will happen after version 2.2 expires?

By August 2015, we will either have a new publisher lined up, or we will create another free version.  What is holding us up right now is our negotiations with the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who currently owns TinkerPlots.  Once they have decided about their future involvement with TinkerPlots, we can complete our discussions with various publishing partners.

If I have versions 2.0 or 2.1 should I delete them?

No, you should keep them. You already paid for these, and they are not substantively different from version 2.2. If and when a new version of TinkerPlots is ready for sale, you may not want to pay for it.  So keep your early version that you’ve already paid for.
Cliff and Craig

Michelle Dalrymple of Cashmere High School and Royal Society teacher fellow, has edited and put into a user friendly format 2 large data sets from Statistics New Zealand and one from C@S.

These are now available in the data viewer on C@S and iNZight to sample from.

Birth SURF 2006

Data summary

• 10,000 observations (synthesized newborn children)
• 29 variables – 20 categorical and nine numeric variables

NZ Income Survey SURF 2011

Data summary

• 29447 observations (synthesized people)
• Eight variables – five categorical, 1 grouped numeric (age bands) and two numeric variables

NOTE: These are large data sets suitable for exploratory use with Achievement Standards
91035 (1.10), 91036 (1.11), 91264 (2.9), 91581 (3.9) and 91582 (3.10)

Census at School Data Sets (UK, NZ, OZ, CA)

Comparison for these 4 countries is now possible.

The statistics forum at NZAMT13 (Wellington, October 2013) enabled a large number  (about 40) of NZ’s most concerned and committed teachers of the statistics in Mathematics and Statistics to state their concerns. We hope that this document summarises their concerns, and is useful in guiding decisions about resource provision of all kinds.

The timing is notable: the NZ mathematics education community is approaching the end of  year one for the new curriculum-aligned level 3 achievement standards. Teachers had recently planned for this and delivered on it. The issues are fresh and ongoing.

The participants formed a group who could speak with authority: as well as the 40 leading teachers, the group included 6 members of the NZ Statistics Association’s education committee, and the conference’s 2 visiting statistical plenary speakers.  The forum was called by members of the education committee, chaired by Nicola Ward-Petty, and recorded by Marion Steel. Marion drafted this document, and Mike Camden edited it.

Marion Steel, Mike Camden (m.camden@clear.net.nz), for the NZ Statistical Association Education Committee,  June 2014.

NZAMT13 forum statistics education resources

We hope you had a refreshing, relaxing summer holiday. 2014 will be another busy year supporting teachers at CensusAtSchool.

Best wishes for a great start to the school year!

New resources

The Auckland Mathematics Association and the Department of Statistics hosted the annual Statistics Teachers Day at the end of 2013.

Teaching resources, videos and links are available here.

The quality of presentations and work on the new standards trialed in classrooms across the North Island, was superb. CensusAtSchool would like to thank all presenters who shared their time and work to make the event a success.

Thank you!

Thank you very much for feedback to our survey – the findings were unanimous that CensusAtSchool is a much needed resource for teaching Statistics and therefore funding looks set to continue this year!

Senior Survey

Your feedback asked for a “senior” survey which has a focus on issues of interest to years 11-13 students.

This is currently being discussed, so if you have any further ideas for questions or questionnaire design please email us.

We recently welcomed Anne Patel, who last taught at Waiheke High School, to the CensusAtSchool New Zealand team. Anne is continuing the great work that fellow teacher Tracey Meek started with the organising of classroom resources on our new CensusAtSchool website. Tracey was on the team for just over a year and we will miss her fantastic input.

Accompanying today’s release of the 2013 data we have updated CensusAtSchool’s data tools to have the same simple, clean look and feel that we introduced for the rest of the site late last year.

For data-viewer and table-maker the changes the user experiences are purely cosmetic. The way in which settings are chosen in random-sampler has changed and now provides some control of sample sizes from subpopulations.

All data tools now have a prominent “Help” button near the top of the page.

Use the data tools »

Pakuranga MP and Minister of Statistics Maurice Williamson joined Pakuranga College Year 9 maths students on Monday, May 6 as they got stuck into practical data collection on the first day of the biennial, online educational project CensusAtSchool. The data collection included measuring arm spans, recording height and answering questions such as “what allergies do you have?” and “How long does it usually take you to get to school?”

CensusAtSchool co-director Rachel Cunliffe says more than 530 schools, representing 1102 teachers are running CensusAtSchool in their maths and statistics classes until June 15, after which the data is released for classroom analysis. “Students love taking part in the activities and then, in class with their teachers, becoming “data detectives” to see what stories are in the results – and not just in their own classroom, but across the country.”

Photo: Stephen Barker, www.barkerphotography.co.nz. ©The University of Auckland.

Photo: Stephen Barker, www.barkerphotography.co.nz. ©The University of Auckland.

Photo: Stephen Barker, www.barkerphotography.co.nz. ©The University of Auckland.

Photo: Stephen Barker, www.barkerphotography.co.nz. ©The University of Auckland.

Photo: Stephen Barker, www.barkerphotography.co.nz. ©The University of Auckland.

Photo: Stephen Barker, www.barkerphotography.co.nz. ©The University of Auckland.

Campbell Live filmed Maurice Williamson in the classroom as a part of their story.  You can watch the clip here.

Full sized versions of these photographs and others are available for free for media use.  Please contact us.

Tuesday, March 5th is the official NZ census.

The census is the official count of how many people and dwellings there are in New Zealand.  It takes a snapshot of the people in New Zealand and the places wehre we live.  The last census was held in 2006.  Census information is needed for planning vital public services such as education, health, housing and transport.  It is also used to help understand how our society changes over time.

By law everyone in New Zealand on census day must fill in a census form for the dwelling in which they are staying that evening.  Check that your students know this and go home and remind their family members to fill in the form.  Alternatively, they can complete their census forms online at http://www.census.govt.nz/

Statistics New Zealand

Statistics New Zealand is New Zealand’s national statistical office, collecting and publishing information the country needs to grow and prosper for nearly 120 years.  You can find lots of information about New Zealand and New Zealander’s on the Statistics New Zealand website (www.stats.govt.nz), including information about businesses, population, health, and employment.

There are resources available for teachers and students at www.stats.govt.nz/schoolscorner, including the new game, Tere counts the country.

‘Tere the Tui: Tere counts the country’  is a new, free learning game, designed by Statistics New Zealand to help familiarise children with New Zealand statistics as well as statistical terms.

Players answer multi-choice questions about each region of New  Zealand, finding answers in the tool Interactive Boundary Maps.
When players have correctly answered a question about each region they can choose to go in the draw to win one of 200 Census branded USB sticks.
Tere counts the country can be played by children in the classroom or at home.

2013 is the International Year of Statistics, a worldwide event supported by nearly 1,700 organizations!

The founding organizations of the International Year of Statistics—also called Statistics2013—are the American Statistical Association, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, International Biometric Society, International Statistical Institute (and the Bernoulli Society), and Royal Statistical Society. As established by the founding organizations, the campaign’s primary objectives are to do the following:

• Increase public awareness of the power and impact of statistics on all aspects of society
• Nurture statistics as a profession, especially among young people
• Promote creativity and development in the sciences of probability and statistics

Visit the website, Statistics2013 and promote Statistics as a tool for life (and possibly a career option!).