The Southern California Chapter held its fifth annual project competition for high-school AP Statistics students on May 15 at City of Hope National Medical Center. A new record of 73 teams (from seven schools) participated.
Before the awards luncheon, Don Bentley, professor emeritus at Pomona College, gave a presentation titled “The Compleat [sic] Statistician,” in which sound statistical practice was related to a competition project that was completed well. Ten entries were declared winners and the students were given a small cash prize and T-shirts donated by Minitab.
Concurrent with the competition, the chapter held a tutorial session for teachers who accompanied their students. After a welcome by competition chair Rodney Jee, chapter president, Robert Gould, presented a review of the graphics used on the competition entries. Robert Newcomb of UCI presented a demonstration of SAS’ JMP software, and Lee Kucera of Capistrano Valley High School gave a lesson on the uses of Texas Instruments’ NSpire calculator for teaching statistics. At the end of the session, door prizes and giveaways from SAS, JMP, Minitab, and Texas Instruments were given to the teachers.
The competition has been the chapter’s primary K–12 outreach over the past few years. Its success has led to wider participation, and chapter members have begun discussing ways to improve it and find additional avenues to promote the statistics profession to students.
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