You Manage to use Statistics and Probability, Probably Every Day

               It is easy to forget how much statistics effect the decisions we make every day. Even without statistical data, we often chose one thing over another based on past experiences and what should or ought to happen. I don’t go to my regular coffee shop on Wednesdays, because that is when they have their specialty donuts making it very busy all day. I leave for work most days 30 minutes before my shift starts, but not on Friday’s or Saturday s, because I know that on average the roads are much more congested and it takes longer to arrive compared to the other days in the week. Statistics, and specifically the management of data and knowing what it tells us allows us to make better decisions throughout the day.

                This week in our math class, we focused on data management and probability, our final strand and a strand that I have struggled with but have much appreciation for.  I really like the idea of how organized the process is and how much information one can draw from various variables. In data management, the data is not the most important aspect. You can collect all the data you want, but it is how you use it and organize it in different ways to show what is really happening is what is most important. When it comes to teaching student’s about data management and probability, it is easy for educators to give each pair of students a coin and ask them to flip it 100 times and record the results, but that is not very fun. As I have stressed in the past about the other strands in math we have covered, when it comes to data management and probability, it is very important to structure your activities so the data that is being used engages the students. Not only can the data they are using in their questions and activities be about topics they like, sports, music, art and popular culture, a great tactic to use is to ask students what they would like to know about their school and have them collect the info through a survey. This type of activity not only exposes them to the collection of primary data, it exposes them to the fact that most questions you ask result in some sort of categorical data, and if you have enough of it, you can make assumptions based on the data.

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                Illustrating how data should be collected and organized from start to finish is a crucial skill for students in grades 7 and 8.  I believe students need to practice their surveying methods early on in their schooling because it is very hard to understand the difference between good survey questions and bad survey questions and how easy it is to be biased even if you are not trying to be.  In the text, Making Math Meaningful to Canadian Students, K-8, they identify the common  error of creating questions that are unclear or vague as the most common misconception when students begin to collect data. Students may ask in a survey, “How much do you look after your pet?” which could result in a huge number of varied responses. Instead, educators should have students test out their question on friends and family, so they avoid the answer of “please explain the question”. A better way to ask the same question could be “How many times a week do you look after your pet?” which would most likely result in more specific responses.

                We go through our lives collecting data without even knowing it, it is important for students to realize just how useful it is to be able to make decisions or discover trends about things they would have never found in the first place. I like collecting data, I like it when after everything is organized you can discover certain things you were looking to prove, but also expose other aspects I was not considering before. My favourite way to use my data collection skills is while I am coaching football. It is often said that football is 50% a mental game, a claim that is backed up by how much film is watched on your opponents in order to discover team tendencies. Every week I would sit down and record how many times a team did a certain play, type of play in certain situations, what plays they call most but also what specific things certain players do in certain situation. I collect all this data so we as coaches have an idea of what the team will do come game day. Although math had never been my strongest subject, the fact that one of my favourite parts about coaching is the film study and team data collection, is proof of how meaningful and useful math skills are when you get older, which is the key message  I intend to teach my mat students in the future.