Thanks to Heather Collins from Our Lady Star of the Sea School for sharing these photos of her class taking part in CensusAtSchool yesterday:
Thank you for helping make today our biggest CensusAtSchool launch ever!
1,871 teachers registered
1,010 schools registered
1,877 students took part today
We look forward to a big day tomorrow. The survey remains open until the end of 2022.
We are proud to announce our new live dashboard. See if your school is one of the highest participating schools and fun stats coming in as students take part!
CensusAtSchool New Zealand – TataurangaKiTeKura Aotearoa celebrates the launch of their tenth biennial survey today to once again comprehensively chart children’s views of their own lives. The large national survey will give another intriguing glimpse into school children’s lives.
Thousands of primary, intermediate, and secondary school students around the country will share their views on issues as wide-ranging as climate change, the amount of time they spend on digital devices, where young people get their news from, and how they felt about lockdown learning. Senior students will be asked to also share their own attitudes to when they think it should be legal to drive, vote, buy alcohol, and vape.
The students are taking part in CensusAtSchool New Zealand – TataurangaKiTeKura Aotearoa, a non-profit, online educational project that aims to bring statistics to life in both English and Māori-medium classrooms. It is run by the Department of Statistics at the University of Auckland in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Stats NZ.
Supervised by teachers, students from years 3-13 anonymously answer questions in English or te reo Māori on digital devices. Some questions involve practical activities such as measuring the length of their feet and weighing their laden school bags.
The tenth biennial edition of CensusAtSchool is expected to have the highest number of schools, teachers, and students participating. More than 30,000 schoolchildren are expected to participate in CensusAtSchool this year. As of launch this morning, approximately 1,800 teachers from almost 1,000 schools had already registered – the highest figures ever.
Co-director Rachel Cunliffe says, “We’re passionate about getting real, relevant data about New Zealand students into their hands so that they can grow their data science superpower skills.”
Rachel Cunliffe, a former University of Auckland statistics lecturer who now runs a digital design company, says teachers are always looking for rich cross-curricular classroom activities.
Professor Chris Wild, statistics education expert and co-director says, “The students experience the whole statistical cycle – they complete the survey and then use statistical methods to explore the data and tell the stories in it. It helps students see the importance of statistics in today’s world – and they love finding out what other students are thinking and doing.”
CensusAtSchool is part of an international effort to boost statistical capability among young people and is carried out in Australia, Canada, the United States, Japan, and South Africa. The countries share some questions so comparisons can be made.
Preview the questions and see which schools are taking part on CensusAtSchool’s website: www.censusatschool.org.nz
Need help exploring data using technology in your teaching and learning?
Catch up on the latest professional development for Data Science. These webinars are a great starting point to help structure and support STEM opportunities for your colleagues and students.
Data Science Education Meetups
Recommend starting with: What Kinds of Questions Do Students Generate as They View Data Visualizations?
“Thinking about questions makes me think of more questions.”
CensusAtSchool New Zealand – TataurangaKiTeKura Aotearoa celebrates the launch of their tenth biennial survey next month to once again comprehensively chart children’s views of their own lives.
From May 10, the voice of Kiwi students will be heard on issues as wide-ranging as climate change, the amount of time they spend on digital devices, and their own attitudes to when they think it should be legal to drive, vote, buy alcohol, and vape.
New to the survey in 2021 is a question that explores where young people get their news from and how they felt about lockdown learning.
The survey now includes improved bi-lingual support with the ability to toggle between English and te reo Māori.
Another new feature includes an audio option for the English questionnaire to support students with reading difficulties.
CensusAtSchool New Zealand – TataurangaKiTeKura Aotearoa, is a non-profit, online educational project that aims to bring statistics to life in both English and Māori-medium classrooms. Supervised by teachers, students from Years 3-13 anonymously answer 34 questions in English or te reo Māori, and later explore the results in class. CensusAtSchool runs every two years, and in 2019, more than 32,000 students took part, representing approximately 500 schools and 1,000 teachers.
You can preview the questions here. See the registered schools.
CensusAtSchool is a collaborative project involving teachers, the University of Auckland’s Department of Statistics, Stats NZ, and the Ministry of Education.
It is part of an international effort to boost statistical capability among young people and is carried out in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, the US, Japan, and South Africa. The countries share some questions so comparisons can be made.
In New Zealand, CensusAtSchool is co-directed by Prof Chris Wild of the Department of Statistics at the University of Auckland and Rachel Cunliffe, a former lecturer in the department who owns web design studio cre8d design and is a commentator on youth culture and online communications. She is the principal media spokesperson for CensusAtSchool and can be contacted at census@stat.auckland.ac.nz or phone 027 3833 746. A high-quality, copyright-free photo of Rachel is available for download here.
Key dates:
- May 10: CensusAtSchool survey goes live and schools start taking part.
- May 24*: Interesting initial statistics from the survey data released to media.
- May 31*: Second release of statistics from the survey data released to media.
* Date dependent on response rate
For a general audience (with an interest in Statistics and/or Computing)
Register for (free) in-person attendance
10 March at 6:30pm
Data Science in the Connected Era
Dr Simon Urbanek, Senior Lecturer, Department of Statistics, University of Auckland
17 March at 6:30pm
Implementing a Machine-Learning Tool to Support High-Stakes Decisions in Child Welfare: A case study in Human Centred AI
Professor Rhema Vaithianathan, Centre for Social Data Analytics, AUT
24 March at 6:30pm
Modelling to support the COVID-19 response in Aotearoa New Zealand
Dr Rachelle Binny, Manaaki Whenua-Landcare Research and Te Pūnaha Matatini
|
||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
|
Last week the University of California sent a momentous email to 20,000 high schools announcing that they would now accept data science as an alternative to algebra 2 – this has huge implications for schools & students. Read the full announcement
The ZDM special issue on Innovations in statistical modelling to connect data, chance and context is now freely available (open access) during October.
It would be great, if you could distribute the news via your networks.
https://www.springer.com/journal/11858/updates/18235366
Published 9 September 2020
Royal Society Te Apārangi remembers celebrated mathematician Sir Vaughan Jones
It is with sadness we share news of the passing of Sir Vaughan Jones FRS Hon FRSNZ, aged 67, from the complications from an ear infection. Sir Jones will be remembered as a brilliant mathematician who made outstanding contributions to the field of mathematics, scientific research and higher education.
Sir Vaughan Jones was born and raised in New Zealand and went to the University of Auckland, graduating in 1973.
He moved overseas to earn his doctorate from the University of Geneva, and became a Professor of Mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley in 1985.
Despite his career overseas, Sir Vaughan worked hard to promote mathematics of the highest quality in Aotearoa. He has made key contributions to scientific research and post graduate education here in New Zealand and across the globe.
He is best known for the discovery of an unexpected link between the mathematical study of knots – a field dating back to the 19th century – and statistical mechanics, a form of mathematics used to study complex systems with large numbers of components. He found a new polynomial invariant for knots and links in three-dimensional space – something that had been missed by topologists during the preceding 60 years.
His discovery of what is now called the Jones polynomial had origins in the theory of von Neumann algebras. Friend and long-time colleague of Sir Vaughan, Distinguished Professor Marston Conder FRSNZ told the NZ Herald that his work has had a wide application.
“[His] work in theoretical mathematics, which basically helps distinguish one knot from another, had application in biological science, enabling scientists to identify whether two different types of RNA are from the same source,” Marston said.
“That was an outstanding achievement because from theoretical mathematics, his discoveries had real significance in an entirely different field.”
Because of this work, Sir Vaughan became the first ever winner from the Southern Hemisphere of the Fields Medal in 1990, which is widely regarded as the “Nobel Prize of Mathematics” because of the prestige it carries. He famously accepted the award in an All Blacks rugby jersey. He remains the only New Zealander to have won the Fields Medal.
In 1991, Sir Vaughan was the first winner of the Society’s prestigious Rutherford Medal. In 2012 the Society established the Jones Medal in his honour, for lifetime achievement in pure or applied mathematics or statistics.
Sir Vaughan was elected as a Fellow of The Royal Society, London in 1990 and elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1991. In 2002 he was made a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (DCNZM) (later re-designated Knight Companion KNZM).
Our deepest condolences go out to the whānau and friends of Sir Vaughan – he has left a prominent mark on the academic community, one that will not be forgotten.
Sir Vaughan is survived by his wife, Martha Jones, and three children.
Source: Royal Society Te Apārangi
