Re: [asa] An Idea for Lay Education

I do teach math to high schoolers and this sounds like a neat
demonstration. Do you actually engage in physical dice rolling and
tallying of statistics? I'm curious about the details. This is
probably similar to my demonstration (which I don't physically do, but
have a computer model it in a hurry) of shaking a shoe box with a large
number of pennies in it, and counting the number of heads. After a
large number of shakes and counts the number of heads will be a normal
function. I know the computer model doesn't make for quite the hands-on
excitement, but it can crunch the numbers sufficiently fast to begin to
see a recognizable normal curve.

--Merv

Freeman, Louise Margaret wrote:
> I decided long ago if I ever speak to high schoolers on science/faith issues I would start with
> the dice central limit theorem demostration I use in my intro behavioral stats class. It forms a
> nice model for a Christian who believes God is providencially in control of the individual dice
> throws, yet also providing us with a mathmatical law that allows us to predict the pattern of
> large numbers of throws. That same theorem is forms the basis for a large number of statistical
> tests used to intepret experimental data.
>
> __
> Louise M. Freeman, PhD
> Psychology Dept
> Mary Baldwin College
> Staunton, VA 24401
> 540-887-7326
> FAX 540-887-7121
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: JLR173rdNY@aol.com
> To: asa@calvin.edu
> Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 18:15:33 EDT
> Subject: Re: [asa] An Idea for Lay Education
>
>
>> As someone who now teaches high school math, the idea of a Sunday
>> school
>> program on statistics is interesting - uh, Statistics from a Christian
>> Perspective? In Texas Statistics is a senior year class, taken after
>> Algebra 2. The
>> people who teach the class look at as part of literacy - to understand
>> what
>> political polls really mean - and how they can be skewed, to really be
>> able to
>> look at financial statistics in the newspaper - it is a lot harder to
>> fool
>> people who have some sense of how to handle data.
>>
>> Janet Rice
>>
>>
>>
>> ************************************** See what's free at
>> http://www.aol.com.
>>
>
>
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Received on Fri Apr 27 07:41:06 2007