
Visit IASE Satellite website
Visit IASE Satellite website
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.
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.
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?
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?"
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 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’.
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
Once again Boehringer Ingelheim were voted the employer of choice and will be recognised at the prestigious Pf 2012 Awards ceremony.
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.
Working closely with experts at Bristol Myers-Squibb (BMS), the user-friendly tool was developed within Excel using VBA.
CML Audit will soon be made available by BMS to all NHS Trusts throughout the UK.
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.
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.
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.
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.
More information about the 10-year campaign can be found at the official site.
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”.
Plenary Sessions: The plenary sessions with international speakers were inspirational.
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:
The new eLibrary brings together resources from different eras and contexts, allowing users to understand how teaching and learning have evolved.
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.
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.
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.A special guest also attended the March 2010 conference to set the target time to beat in the Nappy Changing activity.
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.
The data collected was made available to all participating schools together with a data investigation worksheet.
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.
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.
The "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.