Lara Harmon, ASA Marketing and Online Community Coordinator
There’s more to look forward to in spring than seeing the sun again! Every April, math and statistics associations across the country celebrate Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month, a full month of programs and initiatives dedicated to promoting better public understanding of mathematics and statistics.
The ASA has big plans for April this year. We’re hosting our first virtual science fair, a chance for middle- and high-school students to put their problem-solving skills to work addressing real-life issues. Students will tackle the theme “Solving Problems with Statistics” as they choose, collect data on, and work to find possible solutions for a problem facing their community.
While students prepare for the virtual science fair, educators can look forward to four live Q&A sessions with professionals who make a living solving problems using statistics. Our guests will introduce students to problems surrounding the following:
- Water quality and public health (Loni Tabb, associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Drexel University)
- Machine learning and video game AI (Eric Laber, associate professor of statistics at North Carolina State University)
- Understanding athletes’ performances (Stephanie Kovalchik, research fellow at the Institute of Sport, Exercise, and Active Living, Victoria University)
- Caring for the environment (Erin Schliep, assistant professor in the department of statistics at the University of Missouri
While watching the prerecorded sessions, students will be able to ask questions in real time via chat and receive live answers from our guests. We’ll announce the schedule for these later in the year, but expect one for each week in April.
Of course, you can also look forward to our annual Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month poster in the April issue of Amstat News.
Leave a Reply