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. The presentation slides can be found at the SPoC website.
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. 
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 
conclusion.
Cre8ate Maths Event at the National Coal Mining Museum
To book a Nappy Changing event at your school please 
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.
Launch of Classroom Olympics
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.
Prizes were awarded to the furthest shot put and longest triple jump.
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.
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.
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 "What is in your bowl?" activities can also be used as a CPD workshop for teachers.
