February 2018 - Make Sense of Math

Thoughts About Statistics
I've been thinking a lot lately about statistics.  I have no stats on my thought, but I was thinking that statistics has to be the most versatile major.   If you majored in statistics you could probably look for a job in virtually any company.  Statistics is so vital and so useful for companies.  Also, on that thought, I recently read an article how statistics would be better taught in the social studies classroom. While I don't 100% agree with this idea, the author makes a good point.  Social studies is statistics in action. 

However, I think a better argument would be that math educators need to do a better job of applying statistics to the real world.  I have not had the opportunity to be in math classes around the country, although I would love to, but my overall feel is that statistics is being taught on a very superficial level.  I feel this because that's how I was taught, until my AP statistics class as a senior in high school, but up until that point statistics was very superficial.  Yes, I could find the mean, median, and mode, I could make a histogram, and even a box-and-whisker plot, but I had no idea why I would want to do those things.  I had no idea how much information I could pull from data.  I had no idea how truly useful statistics can be. 

Generations of Entrepreneurs
The Millennial Generation and beyond are the generations of entrepreneurs.  As business owners, using statistics correctly can make your business flourish.  Ignoring the statistics of your company can cause your business to fail.  We can give our students a strong advantage for their futures if we delve into statistics with them more effectively.  

I'm interested in other people's opinions on my thoughts.  Feel free to comment!

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Thoughts about teaching statistics


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