Statistical applications for the mathematics curriculum

Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley MA

Investigators

Abstract

Mathematical Sciences (21) This project is developing or fundamentally restructuring courses in probability and statistics, and producing textbooks and other written materials suitable for national distribution. The aim of the project is to offer students experience with authentic, contemporary applications of statistics, and to do this in a way that retains an emphasis on what elevates mathematical thinking above its use as a mere tool. The project is providing opportunities for students to experience the power and beauty of abstraction as a process that reveals unexpected connections between objects that are quite dissimilar on a concrete level. The project is strengthening the preparation offered to students, increasing their appreciation of mathematics, and increasing course enrollments and numbers of majors. In particular, the project is producing textbooks and other materials that can either be used for courses at other institutions, or used as models there for the development of new courses in the same spirit. The project makes explicit connections to the crosscutting themes of diversity, technology, and teachers. The institution is a women's college with an outstanding record of involving women in the sciences. All of the courses make essential use of the computer by incorporating numerical methods and probability simulations as the most direct path to applications and concepts that would otherwise not be accessible to our students via paper-and-pencil exercises. Those who teach mathematics in schools should know how mathematics is currently used, have experience with computer solution of problems that are analytically out of reach, and, above all, have the uniquely compelling experience of making unexpected connections by discovering common abstract structure.