Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Three Creativity-Fostering Projects Implemented In A Statistics Class, Margaret Adams

Journal of Humanistic Mathematics

Undergraduates in an introductory statistics class at a rural Southeastern college were assigned three creativity-fostering projects: statistics vocabulary crossword puzzle, word wall, and graffiti art poster. Given math anxiety, fear of failure, and lack of enthusiasm, it seemed imperative to spark interest and involvement. Rhodes 4P’s model (1961) served as the framework for this intrinsic case study involving 62 students. Independent thinking and research, peer collaboration, and use of art supplies within this model (person, press, process and product) generated remarkable learning outcomes. Grading rubrics focused on originality, quality and statistics content. Projects were classified into three qualitative categories ranging …

Designing A Student Exchange Program: Facilitating Interdisciplinary, Mathematics-Focused Collaboration Among College Students, Bryan D. Poole, Linden Turner, Caroline Maher-Boulis

Journal of Mathematics and Science: Collaborative Explorations

Interdisciplinary collaboration is necessary for students’ professional preparation (Laird et al., 2014; Repko, 2014) and may promote effective learning transfer of course content. Such collaborations have resulted in enhanced problem-solving skills and conceptual understanding of statistics content (Dierker et al., 2012; Everett, 2016; Hammersley et al., 2019; Woodzicka et al., 2015). As a result of ongoing collaborations between faculty members in different disciplines and at different universities, we created a “Student Exchange Program” to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration between undergraduate students in mathematics and social sciences. In the current paper, we describe past research that informed the design of this program, …

Why I Believe People Need Painting By Numbers, Jason Makansi

Numeracy

Jason Makansi.2016. Painting By Numbers: How to Sharpen Your BS Detector and Smoke Out the Experts (Tucson AZ: Layla Dog Press). 196 pp. ISBN 978-0998425900.

This piece briefly introduces my Painting By Numbers, which aims to take the core messages of the QL/QR community from academic and professional circles to the rest of the citizenry. I describe the book in the context of the critical need for the most basic numeracy tools to help consumers of news, information, and analysis—delivered through traditional and contemporary social media outlets—determine where a reported numerical result lies on the scale from utter nonsense …