Conker Statistics are proud to develop and host the International Association for Statistical Education (IASE) pages for the 2013 Satellite conference in Macao, China. The overall theme of the conference is Statistical Education for Progress. For the first time IASE will be joining forces with the International Association for Official Statistics and holding a joint theme day titled 'Youth and Official Statistics'.
Visit IASE Satellite website
Conker Statistics were invited to a prestigious event at Ditchley Manor where the guest of honour was the Prime Minister, David Cameron.
Mr. Cameron gave an inspirational after dinner talk on the challenges faced by government in reducing expenditure yet maintaining high standards in public services including Education. He advised that the plans within Education to reduce the number of subjects taught within schools will strengthen the teaching of core subjects including maths, english and the sciences. He also stressed the country needs to motivate the youth to make use of the opportunities available to them and aspire to great things in life.
Dr Brad Payne of Conker Statistics was fortunate to grab a few moments with the charismatic Prime Minister and have a picture taken.
The SPoC team (Dr Brad Payne of Conker Statistics, together with Dr Jenny Freeman and Dr Eleanor Stillman* of The University of Sheffield) were pleased to have the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Learning and Teaching, Professor Paul White, to help with the difficult task of selecting the winners from the high standard of poster entries (* not shown in picture).
2012 saw more regions participate in the challenge including many schools from East Anglia. As always there were a great number of entries from Yorkshire covering a variety of investigation topics. The Olympics featured in many of the posters together with a variety of cross curricular themed investigations. Of particular interest was a study titled "Do children go to bed later on weekends than on weekdays?". Based on a survey of 40 children the results clearly showed a different pattern in bed times with 8.00pm being the most popular mid-week bedtime and 9.00pm being the most popular weekend bedtime.
Proceedings from the International Association for Statistics Education (IASE) Satellite Conference are now provided at the IASE Satellite website. Over 30 inspirational papers/presentations are available to download.
Conker Statistics sponsored the Chipping Norton ice skating event of the year at The Holy Trinity Primary School. Brushing away the festive cobwebs the Prime Minister, David Cameron, attended the sell out event and confidently skated a few laps and assisted children on the slippery surface.
The Challenge event, provided by Conker Statistics, involved estimating the size of the ice rink. Over 150 people took part in the activity and the lucky winner, 5 year old Saffron Williams from the Holy Trinity School, was awarded a certificate and prize during school assembly.
The data set from the challenge motivated some interesting investigations – Are people more likely to underestimate or overestimate areas? Who were better at estimating i) Boys or Girls? ii) Adults or Children?
Conker Statistics sponsored the Chipping Norton Christmas Tree festival, and provided a fun estimation activity for all to take part in. In total 130 people both young and old estimated how many conkers were in the container. This included a special trip from the local primary school who had great fun in estimating. Entrants estimates ranged from 40 to 444 with an average of 126 which was very close to the actual. As nobody estimated correctly, the six closest entries received a box of festive chocolates and a Conker Challenge certificate.
Conker Statistics are pleased to win the contract for the Pf Survey 2012. In addition, Conker Statistics are designing and hosting the new client facing website for a new range of Pf Survey products and services.
In the latest campaign, employees comments from previous Pf Surveys are used to promote taking part. "Can you afford not to listen to your employees?"
Conker Statistics attended the QlikView Business Discovery World Tour event in London. Although Conker Statistics were impressed with the capabilities of the QlikView product, many of the partners are producing substandard dashboards using confusing 3D pie charts and inappropriate data summaries.
Following the success of the customer feedback system, Gymbo Listens, used by over 40 Gymboree franchised sites throughout the UK, Conker Statistics launches a generic feedback system called Company Listens. Aimed at franchised sites the feedback system enables customers to provide valuable feedback and allow managers to monitor the quality of service and ensure standards are being met.
Conker Statistics attended the International Association for Statistics Education (IASE) conference 2011 at the Grand Hotel in Malahide, Dublin. This international conference attracted over 80 delegates from around the world who specialise in the education of statistics.
Dr Brad Payne presented the “Conker Challenge” themed activities that have been popular with over 1000 school children within Yorkshire. Furthermore, Brad Payne, a keen photographer and Brain Philips of Swinburne University of Technology (Australia), captured the atmosphere of the conference with many snaps of passionate participants. The conference photo gallery of memorable images can be found at the IASE Satellite website.
The 2011 Statistics Poster Challenge (SPoC) was another good year with over 660 children taking part from South Yorkshire and the South West. The standard from Primary school entries was as high as previous years and a slight increase in the number of entries from secondary schools was welcomed.
The posters presented the results of class themed studies, experiments, surveys and topical investigations. A selection of 2011 winning poster topics include; ‘The Royal Wedding’, ‘Jumping experiment’, ‘Favourite ice cream’, ‘Fruit pastille challenge’, ‘Watching TV’, ‘Does height affect speed?’, ‘Do boys watch more TV than girls?’, ‘The further away from the sun the colder the planet’ and “How our class saves their money’.
Judging was once again very hard as the standard overall was exceptional and in many cases joint prizes were awarded. Gift vouchers were awarded to the 1st, 2nd and third place winners and all entries will receive a special SPoC certificate.
The judging of the annual Statistics Poster Challenge (SPoC) took place on the 27th June 2011 at The University of Sheffield. Dr Eleanor Stillman, Dr Jenny Freeman, Bryony Black from the University of Sheffield and Dr Brad Payne from Conker Statistics judged the posters.
More information and photos of all the 2011 winners are available at the official SPoC website. www.spoc4schools.org
This study, commissioned by Abbott Laboratories and Abbott Nutrition, enabled sales directors to assess how well they addressed the needs of their sales teams. Employees importance and satisfaction levels for 18 work factors, including salary, company culture, relationship with direct manager, were reported for a 6 year period. Strengths and weaknesses over the time period were easily identified with a dashboard design report.
2011 was another successful year for the Pf Company Perception, Motivation and Satisfaction Survey. Approximately 25% of the UK Pharma sales force took part in the 10th annual survey. The results provide an indication of which work factors are important to employees and how satisfied employees are with their company. Respondents can also vent their frustrations and sing the praises of their employer.
Once again Boehringer Ingelheim were voted the employer of choice and will be recognised at the prestigious Pf 2012 Awards ceremony.
The bespoke analysis and reporting tool developed by Conker Statistics enables the collected data to be sliced and diced to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of a companies sales forces. This year, Conker Statistics worked closely with Health Sector publishing to include a new section on employee benefits received and desired by the pharma industry. To aid interpretation of the benefits data a dashboard report was designed.
Furthermore a salary analysis tool was developed to provide a benchmark of salaries broken down by specific sales roles and years experience in the industry.
ScooterTech are Bristol’s leading Peugeot dealer for scooters and motorbikes. Key to the success of the business is an efficient invoicing and inventory system.
Drawing upon years of experience in developing bespoke Excel applications, Conker Statistics worked closely with ScooterTech to develop an invoicing system that provides the required functionality without the complexities associated with many off the shelf systems.
Conker Statistics along with the National Health Intelligence Service (NHIS) have developed a bespoke data collection and analysis tool for the audit of Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML).
Working closely with experts at Bristol Myers-Squibb (BMS), the user-friendly tool was developed within Excel using VBA.
The tool provides a dashboard of results to evaluate key measures, including the effectiveness of medications at various phases of the disease.
CML Audit will soon be made available by BMS to all NHS Trusts throughout the UK.
Conker Statistics designed and developed the Gymbo Listens web system for the collection and analysis of customer feedback throughout the UK. Gymboree UK have over 40 franchised sites and it is important that customer problems are identified and managed efficiently.
Conker Statistics worked closely with Gymboree UK in the design of the feeback questionnaire, ensuring the data collected would provide effective measures in monitoring the Gymboree experience.
The Gymbo Listens system is a subscription service available to all franchises. It provides visual summaries of the key measures, highlighting strengths, weaknesses and provides a facility to manage the customer feedback.
Gymboree are notified immediately by email whenever a customer provides negative feedback that requires urgent action.
The system also enables Gymboree UK to monitor and support all of its franchised sites around the UK.
Conker Statistics are proud to develop and host the website for the 2011 International Association for Statistics Education (IASE) Satellite Conference taking place in Dublin during August.
The Satellite conferences are one of the highlights of the statistical educator's calendar. Taking place every two years educators from around the world get together to share their passion, expertise and experiences in statistics education.
Traditionally IASE Satellite conferences are themed and are held in close proximity to the ISI Congress. This year, The 58th World Statistics Congress will be held in Dublin from the 21st to the 26th August 2011. The Congress will be held in the Spencer Dock's area at Ireland’s new world-class, purpose-built international conference venue.
Visit the IASE conference website to find out more.
Conker Statistics attended the launch of the Royal Statistical Society's 10-year statistical literacy campaign, getstats.
The official launch took part on World Statistics Day on the 20/10/2010 at 20:10 at the RSS HQ in London.
At the launch attendees were fortunate to see a preview of the "Joy of Stats", a BBC programme presented by the very entertaining Hans Rosling. The enthralling programme showed the sexy side of statistics, appealing to audiences of all ages and abilities. It shows statistics as being at the heart of much of our daily thinking and data as being critical to the way we make decisions.
The "Joy of Stats" programme is now available at the Open Unversity OpenLearn site.
Dr Brad Payne of Conker Statistics also caught up with former colleague, Peter Holmes, the man who initiated a centre for Statistical Education in the UK in the 70's and also started the International Conference in Teaching Statistics (ICOTS) in 1982. 
Prior to the getstats launch, Chris Wild from the University of Auckland presented an enlightening paper entitled ‘Towards more accessible conceptions of statistical inference’.
More information about the 10-year campaign can be found at the official site.
Conker Statistics presented at the International Conference on Teaching Statistics in July 2010 at Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Every four years statistical practitioners and academics get together to share their experiences and insights into the teaching of statistics throughout the world. On this occasion the theme was “Data and context in statistics education: Towards an evidence-based society”.
Conker Statistics were invited to present their collaborative work with The University of Sheffield on the Statistics Poster Challenge for Schools (SPoC). The experiences of running the challenge, including setting up the website, promoting the challenge, setting rules, standard of entries, giving feedback and judging were presented.Plenary Sessions: The plenary sessions with international speakers were inspirational.
Hans Rosling, the genius behind the Gapminder tool which displays the world’s most important trends, gave a showbiz talk to illustrate the wealth and health of world nations over time.
The inspiring talk titled “Helping Doctors and Patients Make Sense of Health Statistics” by Gerd Gigerenzer clearly illustrated the misunderstandings of patients and doctors and how the marketing campaigns of pharmaceutical have unwarranted enthusiasm for their drugs. He concluded that few doctors and patients understand health statistics and that collective statistical illiteracy is largely caused by lack of education in statistical thinking and lack of training in transparent risk communication. The suggested solution is to teach statistical thinking and risk communication in schools.
Cliff Konold the mastermind behind the data analysis package TinkerPlots, an analysis tool for young students, gave a superb demonstration of the many colourful, interactive features. The premise that guided the initial TinkerPlots design was to allow young students to accomplish goals that make sense to them, using operations that they understood. Taking this further, Cliff demonstrated that more advanced data analysis and ideas can be introduced to novices by building on the understanding and skills learned from the basic tool.
Dr Brad Payne of Conker Statistics also caught up with:
Neville Davies and John Marriott from the Royal Statistical Society Centre for Statistical Education based at the University of Plymouth. 
Helen MacGillivray, the president of the International Association for statistical Education (IASE) and inspiration for the AtSchool “Stretchiness” activity developed by Conker Statistics in 2009.
Adrian Bowman from the University of Glasgow who gave an interesting talk on the use of rpanel package developed for the free statistical software system R.
Doreen Connor, the lady who ran the CensusAtSchool project in the UK and developed many data handling resources used in schools throughout the UK.
Mark Crowley, the man behind the creative developments of ExperimentsAtScool and the CensusAtSchool data interrogation tool.
The Education Guardian ran an article titled "Archive for the future" in which the cre8ate maths activities, including over 10 resources developed by Conker Statistics, can be accessed through the National STEM centre's eLibrary.
The new eLibrary brings together resources from different eras and contexts, allowing users to understand how teaching and learning have evolved.
Tom Button, a mathematics specialist at the National STEM Centre, picked out the cre8ate maths activties as one of his eLibrary favourite."A really interesting project is Cre8ate Maths which looks at real life applications and was developed by Sheffield Hallam University. They took 12 major sectors of the Yorkshire and Humber economy - for example, building, food and leisure - and created modules for students on those themes .... they worked closely with teachers and they built slowly, not just on the materials but also the professional development and training."
The 2010 Statistics Poster Challenge (SPoC) had the highest number of entries with over 750 children taking part from Yorkshire and the South West. Although many entries were received from secondary schools, primary schools had the majority of entries with over 100 posters from year 5.
The subject matter of the posters, typically decided by the children working in groups, covered many topics including the World Cup, the General Election, Recycling, Holiday destinations, Favourite pets and hobbies, and Viking lifestyles.
The colourful eye-catching posters came in all shapes and sizes displaying charts, statistics and a suitable commentary including an introduction and a conclusion.
Judging was made very hard as the standard overall was exceptional and in many cases joint prizes were awarded. Gift vouchers were awarded to the 1st, 2nd and third place winners and all entries will receive a special SPoC certificate.
The judging of the annual Statistics Poster Challenge (SPoC) took place on 28th June 2010 at The University of Sheffield. Dr Eleanor Stillman, Dr Jenny Freeman, Dr Liz Harvey from the Univeristy of Sheffield and Dr Brad Payne from Conker Statistics judged the posters.
More information and photos of all the 2010 winners will be available shortly at the official SPoC website. www.spoc4schools.org
The entry was submitted by Euro RSCG Life Medicom for Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals and Otsuka Pharmaceuticals.
Cre8ate Maths Event at the National Coal Mining Museum
Baby Alexander and friends made their final crea8te maths appearance at the National Coal Mining Museum in Overton, Wakefield.
The Conker Statistics team were invited to provide a Nappy Challenge event at the final crea8te event of 2010.
Over 100 students took part in the challenge from ten different schools. Each school recorded their results on their allocated dot plot and comparisons were made by the students at the end of the day.
Once again cuddles were enjoyed by many of the students and the competitive element of the challenge ensured both boys and girls were fully engaged.
To find out more about the cre8ate maths project visit the cre8ate website.
To book a Nappy Changing event at your school please email conker@conkerstatistics.co.uk.
To mark the success of the 3 year cre8ate maths project, funded by Yorkshire Forward, a conference was run at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park where a showcase of cre8ate maths activities and experiences were shared.
As a key contributor to the success of the project, Conker Statistics were invited to run a Nappy Changing Challenge demonstration to illustrate how data investigations can be engaging and help motivate the teaching and learning of data analysis at KS3.
A special guest also attended the March 2010 conference to set the target time to beat in the Nappy Changing activity.
Launch of Classroom Olympics With the 2012 Olympics just around the corner, Classroom Olympics was developed to energise enthusiasm in maths lessons. It offers hands on data collection events for use in schools which motivate data investigations using percentages, averages, ranges, charts and tables to make comparisons, interpretations and draw conclusions.
Over 150 students from 11 schools took part in specially designed triple jump and shot put events which can also be performed in the classroom.
Performing the “How far can you …?” events, engaged pupils, enabled real data collection and motivated the use of data analysis.
Classroom Olympics also allows pupils to voice their opinion on their preferred Olympic sports in schools.
Prizes were awarded to the furthest shot put and longest triple jump.
The data collected was made available to all participating schools together with a data investigation worksheet.
Launch of the Nappy Changing Challenge
In the summer of 2009, the Nappy Changing Challenge, developed by Conker Statistics for KS3 students, was launched at the cre8ate maths event held at the Yorkshire Air Museum.
Over 300 students from 20 schools took part in the challenge, with boys and girls competing to find out who is the fastest at changing a baby's nappy and who is best at estimating the weight of baby Alexander in grams. Prior to performing the change, students had fun in folding their own nappy using a traditional terry towelling cloth. Under instruction to treat the baby doll as if it were a real a baby, students worked in pairs to time and grade the nappy changing.
Girls were generally more careful in performing the change, comforting and cuddling the baby doll, whereas boys adopted a gung-ho approach where a fast time was the objective, regardless of the knocks and bumps to the baby doll. Data was also collected on "Who should change a baby's nappy?" and "How many nappy changes are needed per day?".
The competitive element of the challenge ensured suspense throughout the day until the results were announced at the awards ceremony. The fastest nappy change was from a boy with a time of 65 seconds. The longest nappy change time was 514 seconds - over 8.5 minutes! Amazingly the best estimate of baby Alexander's weight was spot on by a boy from Bradfield School in Sheffield.
Does this mean boys are faster at changing a baby's and better at estimating that girls?
A final cuddle was had with baby Alexander before the students returned home.
Following the event the complete data set and a worksheet were made available to all the participating schools to allow further investigations. Feedback collected from teachers and students indicated that students were very engaged and motivated with the Nappy Challenge and it would encourage further thought, analysis and discussion within the classroom.
The Nappy Changing Challenge can also be used as a CPD workshop for teachers.
To arrange a Nappy Changing Challenge or workshop at your school or event please email conker@conkerstatistics.co.uk.
Launch of "What is in your bowl?"
In the autumn of 2009, the "what is in your bowl?" activity, developed by Conker Statistics jointly with teachers for KS3 students, was launched at the cre8ate maths event held at Eden Camp in Yorkshire.
Over 100 students from 10 schools took part in the days activities.
Motivation for the activityThe "What is in your bowl?" activities cover estimation, measurement and motivate interesting investigations of serving amounts and what is eaten for breakfast.
The classroom investigations motivate the use of averages, ranges, percentages, bar charts, pie charts, and tables to make comparisons, interpretations and conclusions.
The "What is in your bowl?" activities can also be used as a CPD workshop for teachers.
To arrange a "What is in your bowl?" investigation or CPD workshop at your school or event please email conker@conkerstatistics.co.uk.
Professional development for teachers
In addition to children performing the Nappy Changing Challenge at events and in the classroom, the challenge has been used for professional development workshops for teachers. A regional teacher workshop held at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park had a special guest setting the target changing time.
Coming soon
