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Abstract:
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We present an extracurricular statistics course that largely comprises material thoughtfully designed by other statisticians and educators. The module discussed here explores correlations and autocorrelations, and was run during various summer/weekend enrichment programs held at MIT for middle and high school students. We encouraged students to engage with statistics first-hand by playing games (guess the correlation), conducting experiments (testing the Stroop effect), and carrying out physical simulations (taking random-walks across a board). Because our classes had access to computers, students were then able to carry out their walks to 10,000 time steps by running code snippets through online R interpreters. We also discussed "What's going on in this graph?" articles as a class and received many incredibly perceptive remarks. The strangest comment we received from a student about this class was that it helped him see value in the Cartesian grid, as the units on the axes could represent tangible quantities that he cares about. This lesson plan is one of six, and we would love to discuss this experience with and gather feedback from other educators at JSM.
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