Rebecca Nichols, ASA Director of Education, and Roxy Peck, BAPS Program Chair
The American Statistical Association/National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Joint Committee on Curriculum in Statistics and Probability sponsored a Beyond AP Statistics (BAPS) workshop at the annual Joint Statistical Meetings in Chicago on August 3. The BAPS workshop is offered for experienced AP Statistics teachers and consists of enrichment material just beyond the basic AP curriculum.
This year, 27 teachers from Illinois and other parts of the country came to Chicago for a full-day workshop designed to strengthen and expand teachers’ statistics backgrounds. The brainchild of former ASA/NCTM Joint Committee chair Jim Matis, BAPS has been offered at JSM for more than a decade.
This year’s BAPS workshop, organized by Roxy Peck of Cal Poly, was divided into four sessions led by the following statisticians:
- Robin Lock, St. Lawrence University: Introduction to Time Series Analysis
- Dick DeVeaux, Williams College: Multivariate Thinking
- Jim Cochran, University of Alabama: Teaching with Case Studies
- Beth Chance, Cal Poly: Classification and Regression Trees
Reach Out
ASA members are encouraged to connect with local AP Statistics teachers and middle- and high-school mathematics and science teachers. Chapters might also consider sponsoring teachers to attend the next BAPS workshop, planned for JSM 2017 in Baltimore, Maryland. Questions should be directed to Rebecca Nichols, ASA director of education, at (703) 684-1221, Ext. 1877.
Chicago Chapter members also welcomed the BAPS attendees and joined in the breakfast or lunch. New this year, BAPS attendees participated in a lunch presentation and discussion due to an ASA member initiative led by Mark Ward of Purdue and Donna LaLonde of the ASA to bring together teachers and statistics educators to watch the Navajo Math Circles documentary and discuss creating stats circles.
Participants were given a pass to attend the exhibit hall at the Joint Statistical Meetings and a certificate of participation from the ASA certifying professional development hours. Optional 0.5 graduate credit hours was also available through Adams State University.
Course attendees did not need to register for the Joint Statistical Meetings to participate in the BAPS workshop, although there was a discount available for K–12 teachers. Some BAPS participants opted to also attend the high-school sessions of the Meeting Within a Meeting (MWM) Statistics Workshop for Math and Science Teachers on August 2.
Leave a Reply