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PARIS21 Project Receives Warm Caribbean Welcome

1 October 2020 1,612 views No Comment
James Cochran

    Editor’s Note: A version of this article originally appeared in the August 2020 issue of ORMS Today. It is reprinted here with permission.

    Attendees of the Caribbean and Central American Workshop on Teaching Introductory Statistics

    Attendees of the Caribbean and Central American Workshop on Teaching Introductory Statistics

    The Caribbean and Central American Workshop on Statistical Literacy for High School Students opened on the morning of December 3, 2019, with a welcome from Halim Brizan, director of statistics at the Grenada Ministry of Finance. Throughout the three-day workshop, 25 colleagues—primarily high-school teachers, along with a few college instructors and officials from the National Statistics Office and Ministry of Education of Grenada—participated. All were highly engaged and gave outstanding reviews of the workshop.

    The development of the workshop began with an email from Yu Tian and Millicent Gay Tejada, two representatives of the Partnership in Statistics for Development in the 21st Century (PARIS21). Tian, a policy analyst who monitors the global support to statistics and global statistical literacy and engages in reporting of sustainable development goal indicators, and Tejada, the project officer for Asia and the Pacific, had learned of a workshop on teaching statistics and operations research that some US colleagues and I had organized on the University of Alabama campus for a group of colleagues from Mongolia in May 2017. After returning to Mongolia, the workshop participants collaborated with the National Statistics Office of Mongolia to create the Handbook on Statistical Methodology, which provides the basis of a statistics course all students in Mongolia’s secondary schools now take. Tian and Tejada thought a similar approach to improving statistical literacy and growing statistical capacity could be taken in Caribbean countries and wanted me to work with them on the initiative.

    PARIS21 was established in 1999 by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, United Nations, European Commission, and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to promote better use and production of statistics in the developing world. PARIS21 has developed an extensive worldwide network of statisticians, analysts, policymakers, and development practitioners committed to evidence-based decision-making. The organization works with this network to achieve national and international development goals, reduce poverty in low- and middle-income countries, and develop a culture of management for development results.

    I had worked with colleagues on statistics/operations research/analytics literacy and capacity–building projects in several other nations and was impressed with PARIS21’s organization and network, so I was eager to work on this initiative. After we decided our first efforts would focus on high-school education in Grenada and determined the topics to be covered, Tian and Tejada proposed a three-day workshop of effectively teaching introductory statistics for high-school teachers to officials in the Grenadian government. The National Statistics Office and Ministry of Education of Grenada quickly indicated they were eager to work with us and host the proposed workshop.

    At this point, I recruited the following team of statistics instructors to create material and teach in the workshops:

    • Anna Bargagliotti, Loyola Marymount University
    • Beth Chance, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
    • Christine Franklin, University of Georgia
    • Kaycie Maddox, Northeast Georgia Regional Educational Service Agency
    • Roxy Peck, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
    • Lynne Steuerle Schofield, Swarthmore College
    • Nathan Tintle, Dordt University

    The team developed material at the high-school level on the following:

    • Motivation: Why teach/study the material in this module?
    • Organization and Flow: How can/should coverage of the key concepts be organized?
    • Key Concepts: How can each of the key concepts and terms in this module be effectively covered?
    • Examples: How can this material be applied to real problems?
    • Helpful Hints: What else can we suggest for this module?

    The material fit into the following modules:

    • Data Visualization and Descriptive Statistics
    • Probability for Statistics
    • Basic Statistical Inference
    • Regression Analysis
    • Experimental Design and Sampling

    The team decided Chance, Tintle, and I would travel to Saint George’s in early December to deliver the inaugural workshop.

    In addition to the enthusiastic reaction by workshop participants, officials from the Ministry of Education of Grenada and Grenadian National Statistics Office were pleased with the workshop. The Grenada Broadcast Network reported on the event, and Ambassador Didier Chassot praised it.

    We made plans to organize similar workshops across the Caribbean and Central America over the coming years, organize the participants of these workshops into workgroups that will develop chapters for a handbook on statistical methodology oriented to the region, and establish a recurring Caribbean and Central American conference on teaching statistics effectively. We would eventually extend this program to developing regions outside the Caribbean and Central America and ultimately consider replicating the program for operations research.

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