Kelly McConville, Harvard University, and Allan Rossman, Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo
Three hundred twenty-one statistics educators gathered in State College, Pennsylvania, May 30–June 3 at the tenth United States Conference on Teaching Statistics (USCOTS) to exchange ideas and provide mutual support.
Regina Nuzzo, Larry Lesser, Kelly Spoon, and Sara Stoudt gave talks on the conference theme, “Communicating With/About Data.” A highlight was the awards banquet, which featured a presentation by John Bailer about helping students become critical consumers of the news and a live Zoom performance of “The Night’s Overfitting Game” by Cynthia Rudin, who is the grand prize winner of the 2023 A-Mu-Sing Competition. Also, Dennis Pearl presented the George Cobb Lifetime Achievement Award in Statistics Education to Maxine Pfannkuch, who came from Auckland, New Zealand.
Judith Canner organized posters and beyond sessions, which included 52 poster presentations. The conference also featured 13 pre-conference workshops, 29 breakout sessions, and 33 birds-of-a-feather discussions. Presenters shared ideas and facilitated discussions on a topics such as statistical writing courses, alternative grading practices, the role of AI in the statistics classroom, resources for teaching with social justice, teaching coding skills, flipped classrooms, data science courses, and revising the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) College Report. One of the breakout sessions offered tributes to the professional legacy of Stu Hunter on his 100th birthday, which happened to fall on the last day of the conference. Hunter made an appearance via Zoom to celebrate the occasion.
USCOTS 2023 also included a mini conference devoted to statistics education research. Organized by Laura Le and Matt Beckman, this conference featured a keynote presentation by Hollylynne Lee, as well as 15 poster presentations, three talks, and a closing session with reflections from Pfannkuch.
Following USCOTS, Roxy Peck organized the “Beyond AP Statistics” (BAPS) workshop for high-school teachers and university faculty. BAPS is sponsored by the ASA/National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Joint Committee on Curriculum in Statistics and Probability.
Conference slides, handouts, and videos of the keynote addresses can be found on the conference website.
The next USCOTS will be held in the spring of 2025.
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